


The Shadows We Lead

by Lady_in_Red



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, POV Multiple, Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:20:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22120054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: When Jaime tries to leave Winterfell, Brienne makes a different choice to protect everyone from his bad decision. This one choice ripples out through the remainder of the war.Season 8 fix-it.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 270
Kudos: 584





	1. Jaime I

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "South" by Sleeping at Last

“You think I’m a good man. I pushed a boy out of a tower window, crippled him for life, for Cersei. I strangled my cousin with my own hands, just to get back to Cersei,” he told her, standing in the frigid courtyard of Winterfell. His breath gusted out like smoke around him. He should be shaking with cold, his forgotten cloak still hanging in her chamber, but he was frozen through already. The cold of the North couldn’t touch him anymore. 

Brienne wore a thick wool robe that Sansa had given her, a robe Jaime had borrowed a number of times to chase off the chill after a bath. He forced himself to drop her hand. She’d held his face in her warm, gentle hands only moments ago and told him he was good, as if her touch would make it true. The man she was talking about, the man she’d thought slept in her bed this night, was an illusion of her own making. Brienne thought she wanted all of him, but she only wanted the man, not the shadow he could not escape. 

Jaime had fucked her tonight knowing he would almost certainly leave her. Savored every look, every touch, every gasp and moan. She liked to curl her fingers in his hair and watch while he tasted the salt of her skin and the slickness between her strong thighs. She had never turned him away, no matter how late he came to her, even if all he wanted was to share the warmth of her furs and her body.

He should have left her alone tonight, should have fled south without the taste of her in his mouth and the smell of her on his skin. Brienne wouldn’t have begrudged him a night apart, accustomed to occasional nights when they did not sleep together. Nights he stood watch on the walls, and nights he could not get Cersei out of his mind. He wondered if she thought him dead and if she was glad of it. Jaime would not use Brienne to forget all he’d left behind in the south, would not debase what they had. 

And what they had was so much better than he’d ever dared hope. When Jaime came to her bed, they didn’t indulge in a quick fuck and go their separate ways at once, as he was accustomed to. They stayed tangled together under the furs, skin to skin, surrendering to sleep wrapped in a peace deeper than he’d ever known. Often they woke deep in the hour of the wolf, fucking slowly while he swallowed her gasps with his hungry mouth, or she would wake him in the grey light before dawn with a calloused hand on his cock. Brienne seemed to like nothing better than to greet the day riding him while the shadows caressed her pale flesh. 

On this last night, Jaime had slipped out of bed once she slept, and sat by the fire, fully dressed and packed, trying to summon the courage to leave. It would have been easier to stay, easier to pretend that he had a future in the North, that the troubles of the South would not follow him here. But they would. He was a loose end no matter who sat the throne, and both sides would have plans for him. He deserved it, whatever bloody fate he met, and Brienne did not deserve to be caught up in that. 

She must know now, what he was. Hollow. And he wished he could let her pour her goodness into him, fill him with her certainty and her integrity. But he couldn’t. None of that was for him. 

“I would have murdered every man, woman, and child in Riverrun, for Cersei,” he told her, the memory of her face in his tent at Riverrun burning him from the inside out. 

Brienne swallowed hard, and a tear spilled down her cheek. Her voice trembled. “This time you’ll only have to kill me.”

Jaime almost laughed, because he did try to kill her once, and could not imagine trying again. “I won’t kill you,” he said softly. He was not that monster yet. “No more than you would kill me.” He turned to his horse, unable to stand the hurt in her eyes a moment longer.

Blinding pain filled his head, and the world tilted.  


Brienne stood above him, robe gaping to reveal bare legs and her swordbelt around her waist. Oathkeeper gleamed in her hand. Perhaps she could kill him, after all. 

* * *

Sun filtered through a small, barred window when Jaime opened his eyes, his head throbbing in time with his heartbeat. It took him more time than it should to remember how he got here, lying on a thin pallet in what was clearly one of Winterfell’s cells. 

Brienne. She must have hit him with the hilt of her sword. 

“Are you awake, ser?” Podrick’s voice sounded uncertain, as if he wasn’t sure he should show any concern over the prisoner in the cell. The man who, until she bashed in his skull, had taken up residence in his lady’s bed. 

Jaime tried to sit up, the world spun and started to dim around the edges again, and he settled for turning his face toward the door. The squire’s broad face peered through the bars. “Yes, Podrick. You can tell your lady she didn’t kill me.” 

The cell was cold despite the furs piled around him. Brienne didn’t want him dead yet, though perhaps Lady Stark was planning to gift him to Daenerys when the war ended. He had no right to feel so betrayed. He was leaving her, to return to Cersei, who wanted them all dead. Perhaps even him, though Jaime thought if his sister really wanted him dead, she wouldn’t have sent Bronn to kill him. 

He always knew that Brienne would choose Sansa over him. He chose Cersei over everyone, even his brother most of the time, even his own life if it came to that. He could hardly blame Brienne for her choice. And he couldn’t even pretend she wasn’t right to stop him. He knew far too much about their troops and their tactics. Cersei would send Jon Snow back to Winterfell in pieces, and then she would send Jaime with ten thousand men and command him to tear the castle apart until nothing remained but a pile of broken stones on the moor. 

He would warn Brienne to run. Take her lady and flee beyond the Wall, find that crass ginger wildling and let him keep them safe. It would tear Jaime apart, but he’d send her away a hundred times to avoid facing Brienne across a battlefield. Not that she would heed his warning. She would be more stubborn than the Blackfish, with the same result, some nameless Lannister soldier stealing the light from her eyes and presenting Jaime with her bloody sword.

And yet Jaime knew that if Podrick opened the door, he would still go south. How could Brienne say he’s a good man? He only ever was with her.

Podrick smiled at Jaime through the bars, then remembered he shouldn’t. “Lady Sansa says you’re to stay here ‘til the war’s done.” He was apologetic, as if he had any say in this. 

Jaime grunted his understanding. “And you’re my gaoler. My apologies.”

Podrick frowned then. “Ser milady doesn’t want to see you.”

“No, she wouldn’t.” Brienne, for all that the years of war had done their best to soil her, still wore her honor and righteousness like a cloak. Blue, not white. Pure as a summer sky, and just as remote. This wasn’t even about her own betrayal, and he surely betrayed her as much as she betrayed him. This was about her precious vows to Catelyn Stark and her daughters. 

If it was only for her sake, Brienne would have let him go. Her tears weren’t for her cold bed or the stain on her reputation or the state of her heart, and they weren’t meant to manipulate him. She was nothing like his sister, in bed or out. Jaime wasn’t sure if she loved him, not as he loved her. He never said the words, but neither did Brienne. She loved fighting with him, she loved the feel of his beard against her skin and his cock inside her. But she never claimed him, never whispered in his ear that they belonged to each other, never pulled him into dark corners to slip her hand into his breeches or marked him with nails or teeth. Brienne had made no demands on his time or affection, took what he offered and gave of herself freely with no expectations. He hadn’t really known what to do with that. 

Podrick pressed his face against the bars. “Did you really try to leave in the night? To betray us to your sister?” The lad sounded pained, and Jaime wondered how he’d managed to make a good impression on Podrick in barely a moon’s turn. One battle shouldn’t have been enough, and crawling into Brienne’s bed without wedding her certainly hadn’t helped. 

“Yes and no. I had no plans to betray anyone here, nor the army that marched south.” His sister would have demanded it, he couldn’t pretend she wouldn’t, but Podrick wouldn’t understand why he would betray the men he fought beside. Podrick had no family, he didn’t understand how tightly those bonds bound Jaime to his siblings, to the child growing inside Cersei. Weren’t fathers meant to burn the world down to protect their children? Wouldn’t Ned Stark do the same? Even if Cersei wouldn’t let him claim this child, he owed it a chance to live. 

He paused, trying to sort out his thoughts better than he did with Brienne. “I don’t belong here, Podrick. I’ve stood at my sister’s side for more than twenty years, doing her bidding, no matter what she asked of me. I did everything my father asked of me, too. Abandoning Cersei, fighting just once for a cause greater than Lannister power, doesn’t absolve me of the rest. My fate is tied to hers, as it always has been.” 

Jaime offered the lad a small, sad smile, glad that Brienne had Podrick by her side. She would need him. “When this is over, and the dragon queen has turned my bones to ash or Lady Stark has mounted my head on a spike over the castle gate, ask Bran Stark what I did to deserve it. He’ll tell you, and you’ll only wonder that the Seven didn’t strike me down sooner.”


	2. Tyrion

Grey Worm’s hands were bloody. That was the first thing Tyrion noticed when they crossed paths in a corridor of the Red Keep. The second was that he was clutching Cersei’s silver circlet. 

Tyrion’s stomach turned acid, a wave of nausea rising in his throat. Cersei never cared for him, nor he for her. They communicated in threats and insults, but they had always been Lannisters first. And she carried the future of House Lannister, Jaime’s child. 

Tyrion checked the throne room first, then the Tower of the Hand, though the second was lost above a wrecked staircase littered with dead Kingsguard and the chainless maester Qyburn, his skull crushed. Picking through the rubble had revealed neither Cersei nor the Mountain. 

But Grey Worm was returning from beyond the Tower of the Hand, and at once Tyrion realized that his sister had taken refuge in Maegor’s Holdfast. Between the moat and the Mountain, she should have been safe. The holdfast’s walls were four feet thick, designed to withstand dragon fire. 

He’d forgotten how the steep stairwells and meandering corridors of the Red Keep taxed his short legs, and Tyrion was panting with exertion by the time he crossed the narrow bridge across the moat. The bridge the Mountain should have raised when they entered the holdfast, but plainly hadn’t. 

The door swung open easily, but the queen’s ballroom within was silent, empty. The space was dim, one immense room taking up the entire first floor, with a staircase cut into one wall leading to the upper floors that housed the royal apartments. Cersei had waited out the Battle of the Blackwater here, with Sansa and the other ladies. Later he’d learned that Cersei was found on the Iron Throne, Tommen in her lap, when the battle was won. He had truly expected to find her seated proud and tall on the throne again, not hiding in the holdfast. 

Reluctantly, Tyrion ascended the stairs. Halfway up he found a bloody handprint smeared on the stone wall. At the top, a trail of wet droplets led away down the corridor, toward the queen’s chambers. He opened each door along the corridor, hoping to find Cersei cowering in Myrcella’s chambers, or Tommen’s, hoping it was the Mountain’s blood painting the wall and dripping from Grey Worm’s hands. As often as he’d cursed her, as often as he’d wished her dead, Tyrion could not contemplate a world without her in it. Who was he if not his father’s shame, his sister’s antagonist?

Cersei had always hated him, even as a baby. Oberyn’s tale of Cersei trying to twist off his penis rang true. Hardly the first or last cruelty she visited upon him. But he understood it, in a way. Tyrion came, and their mother left, and he was hardly a good trade. Tywin once told Tyrion that he had considered throwing him into the sea as a newborn, but he was a Lannister. Even a stunted, deformed Lannister was worth more than everyone else. So he had stayed, a constant reminder of the woman they all missed. 

Tyrion had caught glimpses of a softer Cersei, a loving Cersei, when she was with Jaime. A twisted sort of love, to be sure, but if Jaime saw something precious in her, surely it must have been there. She’d been a loving mother if not a particularly good one, too convinced of her children’s golden perfection to consider that something was terribly wrong with Joffrey. 

But even Jaime had left her. He’d come north alone, facing almost certain death, and when the Stranger passed him by, he’d flung himself with enthusiasm into Brienne of Tarth’s bed. It had been strange and delightful to see his brother so content, so at peace, with his taciturn giantess. And yet it wouldn’t surprise him if Jaime had come south after the army left. 

That thought quickened his steps, following the blood trail to its inevitable end at the queen’s door. With a heavy heart, he turned the knob and pushed open the door. The heavy metallic tang of copper filled his nostrils. 

Blood splattered one wall. Below it, Cersei was crumpled on the floor in the heavy red velvet gown she’d worn when she executed Missandei. A thick pool of blood extended around her head in a terrible halo. Cersei’s head was misshapen, her skull broken. Tyrion leaned against the wall for support, his head swimming, regretting every time he’d promised to kill her. 

Where was the Mountain? He would not have abandoned Cersei, according to Jaime the man no longer appeared to have much will of his own. So why was she alone here? Had someone managed to fell her massive guard before she fled here? Or was someone else with her by then? 

Tyrion circled the room quickly, fearing every moment that he will find Jaime broken as well. But the room was empty, only the cooling corpse remaining. He forced himself to approach closer. 

A bloody Unsullied spear lay just out of her reach, and now he could see the gaping rents in her gown, the gore spilling from her wounds. Tyrion had told them all that Cersei was with child, convinced by the way she touched her belly, the way she avoided wine as she only did while with child, the taste of it turning her stomach in that delicate state. But he saw no sign of a babe’s remains in the bloody mess. He should, if she’d carried a child of Jaime’s. It doesn’t matter now, though perhaps it would make some small difference to Jaime. Tyrion thanked the Crone in her wisdom for keeping his brother away from this. Jaime would butcher every man and woman in this castle if he could see Cersei now. 

Tyrion wasn’t feeling particularly charitable toward them either. His experience of battle was limited, but even he could tell that this was not execution, it was slaughter. Grey Worm had slashed open the belly of what he thought was a woman with child, then dashed her head against the wall. Perhaps Cersei didn’t die fast enough, or she fought back. She would have gone out claws slashing, fangs bared, a lioness to the end.

With Cersei dead, there was no one to stand against Daenerys, and after the carnage of her victory, Tyrion was certain that someone must stand between her and her worst impulses. He could not be that man, not now that she distrusted his advice.

Tyrion hurried from the holdfast, hoping to find Jon Snow. The queen’s nephew, and her lover, and a complication none of them had needed, but he had need of the man now. He found Snow on the threshold of the main courtyard of the Red Keep. Jon’s face was smudged with soot and blood. The boy who once thought himself Ned Stark’s bastard had always been dour like the man who raised him, but he looked positively mournful now. As well he might. He brought her here. So did Tyrion. They were all complicit in this bloodbath, and they would never scrub away the stain.

Before them, Daenerys addressed her cavalry in Dothraki, and then Grey Worm and the Unsullied in Valyrian. Tyrion only understood every second or third word, but he felt what she was saying. She had conquered this place and vanquished her enemies, and she would not stop until all the peoples of the world bent the knee or died screaming. 

Tyrion waited until Daenerys had finished, until she had held up his sister’s crown and heard the war whoops of her Dothraki, the Unsullieds’ spears pounding the courtyard. She was still holding the crown when she turned and saw Tyrion standing in the shadow of the ruined doorway.

He didn’t wait for her to speak first. He snatched the crown from her hands and waved it in her face. “Did you order this?” he hissed.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what—”

“Don’t lie to me. My sister was slaughtered. He slashed open her belly.” His voice broke. “Her head was dashed against a wall.” Tyrion pointed the crown at Grey Worm, standing straight and proud behind his queen. His hands were clean now, but Tyrion would never see them as anything but bloody. 

Snow stood like a statue, his face pale as milk, his dark hair flecked with ash. In a single day, their dream had become a nightmare from which they would not wake. 

For just a moment, Daenerys seemed stunned. She turned to Grey Worm and asked, “Is this true?”

The Unsullied answered stiffly in Valyrian, but Tyrion heard “Missandei” well enough. 

Daenerys’s shoulders stiffened, and she turned back to Tyrion with an expression that showed no regret. “I could not allow her to live. You knew that.” 

He did. Cersei’s death was inevitable even with the surrender. The manner of it was not. Nor was the brutality visited on the people she claimed to love as her own children. “What about your people? The ones you intend to rule? I saw men lying dead in the street, and burned women holding dead children.” 

Smoke drifted between them, and Tyrion wondered if she’d seen the city yet. Seen the bodies of those she’d  _ liberated _ from tyranny. Snow had. Grey Worm had. The men in the courtyard cheering this bloodbath certainly had. 

“They chose to support a usurper.” Her words were less certain this time, but he held out no hope that she understood.

Tyrion tossed Cersei’s crown down the steps. It clattered and rolled and finally stopped halfway down the steps. “They  _ chose  _ to feed their families and defend their homes. The High Septon marched Cersei naked through the streets barely a year ago, and no one stopped him. They threw rotten fruit at her and called her a whore. But when you threatened them with dragons, and she built her scorpions and hired her sellswords, they loved her then. Because she promised to protect them, from  _ this _ .” He gestured toward the city. The smoke was so thick the full scale of the destruction was hidden from view, but she set those fires, called “Dracarys” in Drogon’s ear over and over as she flew over the buildings and watched her people run in fear. She must know the city was still burning unchecked. 

He expected to be seized and dragged away. That moment would come. But not yet. Tyrion yanked his Hand of the Queen pin free of his jerkin. “You’ve won. And the only thing left unscathed is the Iron Throne, yours by rights.” He put all the scorn he could in those last words. “I hope it was worth it.” 

And he tossed the pin down the stairs. 


	3. Jon

Jon found Dany in the throne room, standing before the Iron Throne. It was the only thing left intact amidst crumbled columns and walls, the vaults of the ceiling and the great iron chandeliers in pieces on the cracked marble floors. Ash drifted from the sky like snow, but the throne was pristine, dark and malevolent. 

It looked uncomfortable, worse even than the massive ironwood lord’s chair at Winterfell. Jon had sat there once as a child, on a dare from Robb and Theon. By the gods, it was unfair that they were both gone, and Rickon, too, and Father. Not Father, but the only one Jon had ever known. That chair had been hard as stone, built without any thought to comfort. 

Theon had bet that Jon wouldn’t last until a candle burnt out, an hour or so. Robb bet he could last longer. Jon’s arse had been numb and he’d been terrified his lord father would walk in at any moment, but he’d outlasted that candle. Robb had gone away with a pocket full of copper stars, Theon had grumbled and seethed, and Jon had sworn he’d never sit in that chair again. He’d broken that vow too. 

“When I was a girl, my brother told me the Iron Throne was made with a thousand swords from Aegon’s fallen enemies.” She sounded wistful, disappointed that the true throne didn’t match her brother’s exaggerations. Dany turned and came down the steps. “What do a thousand swords look like in the mind of a little girl who can’t count to twenty? I imagined a mountain of swords too high to climb, so many enemies you could only see the soles of Aegon’s feet.” She was smiling, amused by her own childish notions, but there was also something terrible in her eyes, something sharp and bloodthirsty in her smile. She had not looked like this when they lit the pyres at Winterfell, when they piled the armor and weapons of the dead far higher than that damned throne and the bodies had burned for days.

How many swords had fallen today? A thousand and more. The only reason the streets did not run red was because so many perished burning, or crushed by debris, instead of cut down by the sword. And yet Daenerys saw only the throne. 

“The Unsullied are executing Lannister prisoners in the street. They said they were acting on your orders. When you fought the Lannisters on the Gold Road, you honored their surrender.” Jon hated the tremor in his voice, but he couldn’t help it. He might be the son of Rhaegar Targaryen by blood, but Ned Stark had raised him, and Ned Stark would never have condoned her actions today. Those men surrendered in good faith, trusting to the rules of war, and they would have been better off turning craven and running away. 

The smile fell from her face. “And they took up arms against me again. You would have me let my enemies live and plot in secret until they are strong enough to cast me down?”

“You’ll lose the Westerlands before you even have them,” Jon answered, trying to reason with her. The seven kingdoms had little love for Targaryen rule. Aerys had squandered their loyalty decades ago, even a Northern boy knew that. Rhaegar might have turned that around, but he had decided Jon was more important. How disastrously wrong he’d been. 

“Cersei Lannister is dead.” The satisfaction in her voice was justified, he too remembered Missandei’s head falling from the city walls, but it still chilled him. “I hold Casterly Rock. I hold Tyrion Lannister. And your sister has Jaime Lannister. The Westerlands will bend the knee. They will see Drogon in their skies if they don’t.”

Jon shivered. He was losing her, just as Tyrion had warned him. “What will happen to Tyrion?” Jon asked as calmly as he could manage. He hadn’t understood Dany’s command when Tyrion was taken away, so he’d followed the Unsullied all the way to a dark guest room, where Tyrion was being kept under guard. Their conversation had been brief and painful.  


She looked at Jon as if the answer to his question was obvious. Perhaps it was. “Tyrion dared challenge me in front of my men. If I tolerate that, what might he do next? He won’t stand with me, that means he stands against me.”

Carefully, Jon reminded her, “Tyrion walked through the entire city to get to the keep, and then found his sister’s corpse. That would disturb anyone.” Tyrion was grieving, and lashing out, just as Daenerys had lashed out today. Calming both of them before they could do more damage might be impossible, but he had to try.

“Drogo killed my brother,” Dany said softly, her gaze sliding back to the empty throne. “Viserys begged and cried, but my sun and stars promised him a crown, so he gave him one.”

“You’ve won your crown, Dany. And your throne.” He felt like he was approaching Drogon for the first time, or attempting to ride Rhaegal, like something wild and unspeakably dangerous stood before him. 

“And now I must keep it,” she muttered. “There will always be those eager to put themselves in power.”

Tyrion meant for Jon to put an end to Dany like Jaime Lannister had ended her father. And if Jon didn’t act, Dany would execute Tyrion, and Jaime Lannister as well if given the chance. Jon was unsure if Sansa would offer up such a valuable hostage or keep him. She’d distrusted Daenerys from the start, and Jon could not fault her for that anymore. 

The thought of his sister and his queen at odds was troubling. He needed to take Daenerys’s mind off her enemies, and remind her of her duties as ruler. “Come into the city with me. Ser Davos has asked me to come to Flea Bottom.”

Davos had not come to the keep. Once the fighting ended he’d gone to Flea Bottom. He’d said that no one in the keep needed him as much as the smallfolk did. He knew those people, he was once one of them and perhaps would always think of himself that way. 

She lifted her eyes back to Jon’s face. She was so lovely, her features delicate as porcelain, but her eyes were steel. “No, you are needed here. So am I.”

“To do what? There’s nothing here.” And she had already done enough. He gestured around them. Much of the roof was gone, only a suggestion of the vast and imposing throne room remaining. The throne itself looked small under the grey sky. Jon shook his head. “Dany, your people need to see you. And you need to see them.”

_ And if you smile at their corpses…  _ He couldn’t think about that. Not yet. Not unless it was needful. He closed his eyes for a moment and saw Ygritte, bow drawn and face anguished, fierce and lovely and utterly doomed, and he hoped he hadn’t made the same mistake twice. 

“You think me unfeeling,” Dany said quietly.

When he opened his eyes, she was looking up at him solemnly.

“You won a throne today,” Jon said carefully. “I think you have not yet counted its cost.”

She continued away from the throne and toward him. “When I left Yunkai and marched on Meereen, the masters of that city nailed a slave child to every mile marker along the coast road. One hundred and sixty-three children. Ser Jorah wanted to pull them down before I passed by, but I refused. I looked at every child, saw their faces, witnessed their suffering.” 

Bile rose in his throat. He’d thought after Ramsay Snow he couldn’t be shocked by the depravities of men, but apparently he still could. And yet, that was not the same. “It’s easier to look,” Jon said carefully, “when the deaths are not of your own making.” 

Dany stopped just before him, looking up with her brow furrowed above those lovely eyes. “Then show me.”

Jon waited while a handmaiden brought Dany a hooded cloak, dark grey with a red lining. Her hair was too recognizably Targaryen, and Jon didn’t want to bring Unsullied guards with them. They were likely to kill anyone they saw still living, and Jon could not stand back and watch that. 

Jon led her out through what remained of a postern gate. This castle was even more damaged than Winterfell. It would take moons to make secure, and years to repair. Their boots crunched over the rubble littering the cobbled streets. The smoke stung his eyes, but not enough to obscure the utter devastation around them. 

Jon kept Longclaw sheathed, but his hand was never far from its hilt. There were people here, ashen ghosts in the smoke, but they melted into the shadows as Jon and Dany approached. Even if they couldn’t see the wolves on his breastplate, it was obvious that he and Dany were not Lannister loyalists. 

Unfamiliar with the winding alleyways of the city, Jon stuck to the main roads. They followed the Dragon’s Way to King’s Square. To their left, the ruins of the Sept of Baelor still lay, scorched and twisted by the wildfire that destroyed it. The buildings still standing were pocked by debris, char and ash discoloring the stones. Cracks ran through the walls of the Alchemists’ Guildhall. Jon walked faster, far too aware that shadows and smoke could easily conceal enemies. To their right, Aegon’s Way branched off toward Flea Bottom, and Jon urged Daenerys in that direction. 

The first few buildings along the street were remarkably intact, if covered in a fine coating of ash. The doors had been kicked in, and blood spattered the entryway of one shop. Someone somewhere was sobbing. As soon as they got closer, the sound of their boots audible within the buildings, the sobs choked off. 

Daenerys was silent through it all, no more musings about her brother or her enemies. She stopped briefly before the corpse of a woman, barely more than a girl, her head severed neatly from her body. An arakh did that, Jon was certain. 

He couldn’t look at Dany as he continued walking, hoping she would follow. He still saw Ygritte when he looked at her. He saw Qhorin Halfhand, and Mance Rayder, and Rickon. Daenerys was not the only one who made the wrong choice for the right reason, but his mistakes had not doomed an entire city. 

Ser Davos appeared a few shops further up the street. He was flanked by two boys holding kitchen knives. He muttered something to them, and they disappeared back into the building. “Snow.” He looked again as they approached, and made a hasty bow. “Your Grace, I didn’t expect you.”

A slight smile warmed her face, but her eyes were still remote. “Where else would I be but among my people, Ser Davos?” 

He huffed a little, uneasy, and Jon didn’t blame him. “Aye, of course. Well, then, come in. We’ve been checking buildings, spreading the word, but I fear we won’t find many more alive in this part of the city.” Davos turned and entered the building, Dany following and Jon taking up the rear. 

Jon was keenly aware of the dagger on his belt. How easy it would be to slit her throat, here, in the warren of Flea Bottom. It might be days before she was found, and who could say why she was here or who killed her? 

The interior of the building was dark. A cobbler’s shop, the smell of leather overpowering the smoke. There were lights ahead, and they emerged not into another room, but into a courtyard between buildings. Jon blinked in the sudden light, and it took him a moment to understand what he was seeing.

There was no courtyard here before, only a narrow alley. But the back of the buildings on both sides had crumbled away, burnt roof tiles smashed everywhere. Corpses were piled haphazardly to one side, already drawing flies. The rest of the space was filled with children. Babes in arms all the way up to girls on the verge of flowering. A few scattered Northern troops and local women were among them. Everyone was covered in soot. Many were burned. A few were crying, but most were silent, eyes wet but vacant. 

Ser Davos spoke to one of the men, and they cleared a space for Daenerys to sit down. “Your Grace.” Davos gestured to a singed chair. 

Dany shook her head, and pulled back her hood. Even without a crown, she looked regal, intricate braids falling down her back. And she was clean, the only one among them untouched by soot and ash. Her cloak dragging behind her, she moved into the crowd, touching faces, murmuring soothing words. A mother. The Mother, as far as these children knew.

The children’s eyes followed her, and the weight on Jon’s heart eased. She was not her father, not yet.


	4. Brienne I

The raven came at dusk. 

Lady Sansa stood by the fire in her solar to read it. After the first few words, she reached out and grabbed the mantel over the hearth for support. She muttered a prayer to the Mother under her breath.

“My lady, are you well?” Brienne was shaking in her armor, but she kept the tremor from her voice. Her lady needed her strength, whatever was to come. 

Sansa straightened slowly, visibly pulling herself together. It didn’t take long. She’d come a long way from the shattered girl Brienne had rescued from Bolton men in the snow. Sansa took a seat by the fire, the parchment held tight in her fist. “You’d best sit,” she ordered, and returned to the message. Her porcelain skin flushed and then turned to chalk as she read. One hand stole up to cover her lips. 

Brienne was nearly climbing out of her skin. If Queen Cersei’s army was already on the march, they were lost. Winterfell’s walls were still weakened, and their garrison was laughable. They wouldn’t last more than an hour in battle, but they lacked both supplies and fortifications to withstand a siege. Even so, Lady Sansa would fight to her last breath to keep Winterfell out of enemy hands. And so would Brienne. 

Sansa held out the message. “Read it.”

Brienne took it, inspecting the seal before opening it. A grey onion. Ser Davos. 

She sat heavily in the chair opposite Lady Sansa, and unrolled the parchment. 

Ser Davos’s handwriting reminded her of Jaime’s. Hesitant, with spelling errors, but his words were clear enough. Brienne had imagined many scenarios over the last fortnight, woken from nightmares of fire and blood, but the truth was worse. There was a note at the end from Tyrion, for Jaime. Brienne only understood part of it, but after all, it was not meant for her.

She handed the scroll back to Lady Sansa. “When do we depart?”

Sansa sighed. “As soon as possible. Tomorrow. I will not put the North in her hands, Brienne. Not after what she’s done.” She rose from her chair. “You may release the Kingslayer. He may stay here freely until matters are settled for the realm, but if he chooses to come south, I will not stand between him and Daenerys again.”

Brienne rose swiftly, unsteady and heart pounding. “You never told her,” she blurted out. “About Jaime trying to leave.” She hadn’t expected that. Brienne hadn’t had much time to consider Sansa’s reaction to Jaime’s treachery, but a noose would not have surprised her. A raven to Jon Snow was the least she’d felt was a certainty. And yet that particular bird had never flown south.

A flicker of unease moved across Sansa’s face. “That was for your sake, not his.”

Brienne’s face flamed. “I understand, my lady.” Queen Daenerys had never spoken to her directly, but she’d made her loathing plain. A woman who would defend Jaime Lannister was not to be trusted.

Sansa reached out and patted her arm, an unusually familiar gesture on her part. Her mother hadn’t been physically affectionate with Brienne either. “I do not envy you this task.”

Brienne left her with a brisk nod, and hurried down the corridors before word could spread. She would give almost anything not to bring Jaime this news. Anything but his life. That was what she’d bought, if only for a moon or two, with her betrayal.

She’d known he was gone, truly gone, the moment she woke and found her bed empty. He’d been slipping away slowly for days, more and more often found on the battlements watching the southern horizon in mingled fear and longing. Brienne could not let him slink back to his sister’s side. All that was good and honorable in him vanished in his sister’s presence, so accustomed was Jaime to being exactly what his twin needed, and his guilt over leaving her would override any thoughts of dissuading her from whatever brutal plan she’d hatched. 

In the seconds Brienne had taken to dress, she’d made her decision, forsaking breeches and tunic for simply strapping on her sword under her robe. With luck she wouldn’t need it, just hands on his skin and her heart tripping off her tongue. Words should have been enough. They’d been enough to bring him north, to her side, to fight for all of them. 

But words had not been enough. She hadn’t been enough. So she’d knocked Jaime out with Oathkeeper’s pommel, grateful she hadn’t drawn blood, and carried him to a cell before dressing and reporting to Lady Sansa. 

Brienne had tried so hard, after their first night together, to go on as she always had. Guarding Lady Sansa, training Pod, helping to rebuild Winterfell. And every day the army had marched closer to King’s Landing. Every night, she’d readied herself to sleep alone. When Jaime had knocked on her door, slipped into her chamber and out of his clothes as if he belonged there, it didn’t matter who was the flint and who the steel, the spark lit just the same. They’d burned together, their bodies fashioned for pleasure as much as for war. He talked in bed, so much she hardly had to say a word. The words she’d wanted to say, the words that would drive him away, stuck in her throat. She loved him, so much that it ached, but Jaime was never hers to keep, she’d always known that. 

Pod was dozing outside Jaime’s cell. The boy had a soft heart, as she once had. He would never open Jaime’s cell, but he wouldn’t leave the man who knighted Brienne to rot alone. Lady Sansa hadn’t even assigned guards to watch him, as Jaime wouldn’t get far on foot even if he managed to escape his cell. Yet Pod stood watch whenever his duties allowed. 

Brienne stooped and touched Podrick’s shoulder. The breadth of those shoulders and the muscles moving beneath them were a reminder she dearly needed. Pod wasn’t a boy anymore, and hadn’t been for some time. She would need to knight him and let him choose his own path in the world soon enough. Lady Sansa was fond of him. He might keep a place here even when Brienne was gone. She did not expect to be invited to return to Winterfell after they went south. Something had broken between herself and Sansa when Brienne took Jaime into her bed. Capturing and imprisoning him had not changed that.

Pod’s eyes snapped open, and his cheeks flushed. “Sorry, ser,” he stammered. 

She squeezed his shoulder. “It’s fine, Pod.” She kept her voice low. “The war is over. If you go to my chambers, I will tell you what I know when I’m done here.” 

Pod’s face fell. “I could stay with you, ser.” 

“You think he will harm me?” Brienne had considered the possibility, particularly with the news she bore, but she hadn’t realized that Pod might share her concern.

Pod shook his head. “No, ser. In case you need me to fetch anything. For you or for Ser Jaime.” Brienne still wasn’t entirely sure what he was getting at, but Pod barreled on. “He was in an odd mood today. He was talking about the day he was knighted. Did you know you were the only person he ever knighted?”

Brienne shook her head. She hadn’t known that, but it felt right. He’d broken his vows, lost his faith in the ideals of knighthood, of course he wouldn’t have knighted anyone else. But she couldn’t think about that now, about how that act would bond them for the rest of their lives. 

“I’d best do this alone, Podrick. Go. I’ll be there soon.” She made it sound a certainty, but Brienne did not know what she would say, how Jaime would react. If he would scream, if he would try to hurt her. If he would retreat deep inside himself, as he had when he lost his hand. If he would even allow her to see his reaction at all. But she did know that Jaime would not want Pod to witness whatever he did. She would bear it alone. She owed him that much.

Brienne peered through the bars. There was no movement within. Jaime lay on his side, facing the wall, burrowed under his furs. She had not visited him, not in the fortnight since she put him here. He looked smaller than she’d ever seen him. Even locked in that pen in Robb Stark’s camp, Jaime had retained his pride, his rage. Without it, he was lost. Seeing her might unleash that rage again, and Brienne deserved it. But the fact remained that she would rather he be angry than dead, furious rather than complicit in the deaths of thousands. 

Jaime stirred, sat up. His eyes were bleary for a moment, his face drawn and gray, but his gaze sharpened as she walked into the cell, leaving the door open behind her. “It’s done, then?” His voice was rough with sleep, familiar and comforting in ways that stoked her guilt. 

“Yes.” 

She must be no more than a shadow against the torchlight, but his eyes found hers unerringly. Whatever he saw reflected there, Jaime started to shake. His eyes filled with tears. “No.”

Brienne sank to her knees before him, and the flickering light showed her every emotion as it moved across his features. “The war is over,” she said gently, approaching the news he dreaded with caution. “King’s Landing was destroyed. Your sister is dead.”

Disbelief. Fury. Grief. How did she ever have trouble reading this man’s intentions? His heart was in his eyes, there for anyone to see. Or perhaps only for she who knew him so well. Better than anyone still living, perhaps. 

“How?” he choked out.

“Your brother said there was no babe, and,” she paused, not knowing what this meant but that Jaime would, “she died like Elia’s son.”

Jaime bolted from the pallet, and Brienne rocked back, her hand going to her missing scabbard. It had seemed a mistake to come here armed. She needn’t have worried though, he was not attacking. He was emptying his stomach noisily into a chamberpot. His back heaved, three times, again when there was nothing left and he was only hurting himself. She reached out, rubbed his back as best she could. 

Jaime flinched away from her touch, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and retreated to the pallet. “Who killed her?” His voice was raw, his eyes swimming with pain.

“I don’t know. I thought perhaps Daenerys.” Cersei had killed Missandei, ordered the ambush that took Rhaegal. Daenerys’s hatred of her was personal, not simply a matter of the crown Daenerys felt she’d stolen.

Jaime shook his head violently. “No. She died like Aegon.”

She clenched her fists, staying the persistent urge to reach out and offer him comfort. “Jaime, I don’t know what that means.” She knew only that Elia and her children had died when the Lannister army sacked King’s Landing. Septa Roelle had not considered the details appropriate for a lord’s daughter to know.

Jaime swallowed hard. “Elia, Rhaenys, and Aegon were in Maegor’s Holdfast. I thought they were  _ safe, _ but no one was ever safe from my father. The Mountain found them. He tore Aegon from his mother’s arms and dashed him against the wall.” Tears fell down Jaime’s cheeks, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Clegane was drenched in blood when he dumped the children’s bodies before the throne wrapped in Lannister cloaks. He was laughing as he told us, like he’d made a good jape cracking little Egg’s skull.”

Brienne’s vision blurred, but she bit her lip to stop a sob from escaping. She wiped the tears away as fast as they fell. She hadn’t earned grief over this, even if watching him suffer was unbearable. 

Something shifted in his face as he watched her cry. “Is this what you wanted?” Jaime’s eyes blazed, his mouth set in a hard line. 

Brienne got to her feet. “You alive no matter what happened in King’s Landing? Yes.” She wouldn’t apologize for that, and that might be the one thing Jaime could never forgive. 

“I should have been there,” he snarled, his hand flexing into a fist. If he tried to hit her, she wouldn’t stop him. 

“Why?” She still wasn’t sure what he’d intended. Every word he’d told her on that bleak night had reeked of self-loathing. There was nothing defiant, nothing that spoke of plans to escape or destroy his sister’s enemies. 

“I was supposed to protect her!” he roared, face twisted with rage and anguish. 

“She sent Bronn to  _ kill  _ you, Jaime. Why do you pretend she didn’t?” Brienne had been horrified when Jaime told her about that. He’d chuckled over it, like it was a joke, like Bronn wouldn’t have put that crossbow bolt through him with barely a pang of conscience if he didn’t know the brothers could deliver him a great prize than their sister offered. He was a mercenary, not a friend. 

Jaime stood, crowded into her space, and she saw the Kingslayer in his gaze again. His words were sharper than his sword ever was. “You know  _ nothing  _ about us. We fuck. We fight. It’s who we are. But we are  _ always  _ family. I thought she was carrying my child, and you kept me from protecting them.”

“I kept you from dying with them.” She couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice. Didn’t he understand, she couldn’t let him die? Couldn’t risk that he would get himself and others killed in a futile attempt to save a woman who would rather he die than walk away from her? A woman who had lied to him about a child to keep him bound to her. 

“Why? Because I was in my cups and fell into your bed?” He was trying to hurt her now.

He was succeeding, but Brienne also recognized this pain. Survivor’s guilt. She carried it all the way from Renly’s tent to Riverrun. She carried it still. “Because you’re a good man, and they’re in short supply right now. You remember the pyres, Jaime.”

“The entire bloody city is a pyre, Brienne. I’m not worth that.” His voice was full of such loathing she could scarcely stand it. 

“You are to me.” That was the truth of it, plain and honest. “Do you truly think one man, with one hand, could have stopped any of it?” She hated pointing out his weakness, but it was the truth. 

“Don’t lie to me, Brienne. We faced the fucking dead, no bloody chance of survival, and never once did you consider running away. I didn't lock you in your damn room to stop you from fighting.” Jaime knew he had her, there was no disputing the grim fact that when Sansa’s life was on the line, Brienne had not turned away. 

Jaime looked down at his hands, the flesh and the gold. He did not speak, did not look at her again. 

She waited. Five minutes, ten, the quiet stretched, the distance between them growing though her feet hadn’t moved. 

Finally, Brienne turned away. He lived, but he wasn’t hers anymore, if he ever really was.

“Lady Sansa and I go south in the morning for Daenerys's coronation. You are free to stay here or come with us, but you know what will happen if you go south.” He didn’t answer, but she didn’t expect him to. She left the door open when she went. 

Brienne was barely one cell down the corridor when he began roaring his rage and his grief. A loud clang against the walls, then again, almost made her turn back. It continued as she forced herself to leave him. 

He was beating his golden hand against the walls. 


	5. Podrick

Pod had spent the last hour rushing through the castle, acquiring updates from cranky builders roused from their rest, but still he hesitated before entering Lady Sansa’s solar. Lady Brienne had insisted that she wasn’t angry with him. She’d said it multiple times, in fact, though she had every right to anger. 

Had she told Lady Sansa what he had done? His face still burned with shame thinking about it. He waited, listening, hoping no one would come down the corridor and catch him eavesdropping, adding to his list of today’s failures. He hadn’t meant to upset Ser Jaime or betray his lady’s trust in him. He’d just been so upset himself, thinking about poor Lord Tyrion, that he hadn’t thought before he spoke.

The two women were not planning his execution, nor lamenting his failings. Ser Brienne was suggesting which men at arms should travel with them, and who should be left behind. Podrick waited uneasily to hear he would be left behind, but his name wasn’t mentioned either way. Lady Sansa listed ravens she must still write, giving instructions to her bannermen on defense of the North while she was away. 

Finally Lady Sansa asked, “Where is he?” 

“Podrick? He should be back shortly. You know the builders wouldn’t be keen to wake and write reports this evening,” Ser Brienne answered.

“No, Ser Jaime.” Lady Sansa’s tone was clipped, unhappy. 

Ser Brienne was quiet a moment too long. “Lord Tyrion’s chambers. Pod brought him there and cleaned him up. He’d ... hurt himself.” Ser Brienne hadn’t seen him. Podrick had. Ser Jaime’s wrist was bruised and bloody. “If that’s too close to Lord Bran for your comfort, I can--”

“No, no, I don’t believe Bran is in any danger.” Lady Sansa had barely tolerated Ser Jaime’s presence here. She’d gone out of her way to remind him just how much she loathed him and his sister. And yet she did not sound disgusted with him now. “Do you think he’ll come with us?”

Ser Brienne did not answer immediately, and when she did, her voice was so quiet that Pod strained to hear it. “If he does not, I think he will disappear into the Wolfswood within a day of our leaving, and trouble no one ever again. I’m not certain which to hope for.” 

Pod entered the chamber then, not wanting to hear Lady Sansa’s reply. He liked Lady Sansa, and he liked Ser Jaime, in spite of everything. Neither of them were perfect, but they had more in common than either would ever admit. They had both once trusted and admired Queen Cersei, and both had suffered as a result.

Ser Jaime arrived in the stables the next morning, carrying his meager possessions and wearing the same cloak he arrived in. Clearly irritated with the way Ser Brienne gaped at him, Ser Jaime snapped, “You said I could come.”

She swallowed hard, and Pod busied himself readying her horse. “Yes, but why? Why offer yourself up to her wrath?”

Ser Jaime’s face was hard, none of the warmth he usually showed her present in his expression. “Stop trying to protect me, Brienne. My brother is hostage to a queen who did not honor an army’s surrender. You cannot tell me I’m a good man, an honorable knight, and expect me to ignore that.” 

Ser Brienne blanched, her gaze dropping away from his face. “I didn’t mean to keep that from you. I will do my best to help your brother. I will champion him if need be. I swear it.”

Ser Jaime smiled, but it was terrible to behold. “Don’t swear that. You have no stomach for what needs to be done. Leave it to the treasonous oathbreaker, I’ve ruined you enough.” His gaze drifted down her body, his throat working at the sight of her hand clasped tightly around the pommel of Oathkeeper. 

Pod was frozen, his hands on the horse’s bridle. They’d forgotten he was there, and Pod desperately wished he could slink away unnoticed.

“What will you do?” she asked, the tremor in her voice so slight someone who didn’t know her might miss it entirely. 

Ser Jaime’s smile faded. “After Locke took my hand, do you remember what you told me?” He didn’t wait for her answer, he turned away and went about securing his things to the black mare he’d brought from King’s Landing. 

Pod waited until their small party had departed and Winterfell was no more than a dark smudge on the moor behind them before he asked Ser Brienne, “What was Ser Jaime talking about?”

She glanced over her shoulder at Ser Jaime, riding by himself behind the wheelhouse. They would travel far faster without it, but it held Lord Bran and his wheeled chair as well as Lady Sansa. 

Pod could tell exactly when Ser Jaime caught her looking, because her face flushed, blotchy, hectic red flooding her cheeks and throat. She turned to look ahead. Resolute, visibly pulling herself back together. This was a part of her that Pod saw rarely and didn’t understand until Riverrun. Love was sweet words and soft touches, but it was also giving someone else the power to flay you with a sharp word or cutting glance. 

Ser Jaime was good at hurting her. He was good at loving her, too, not so long ago. 

Ser Brienne didn’t look at Pod, when she finally answered him. But he heard her whisper, full of dread. “I told him to live. Live and fight and take revenge.”

A shiver ran down Pod’s spine. 

He watched Ser Jaime for the rest of the day. Gone was the man who fought with him on the front lines of the Battle of Winterfell. Gone was the man who sparred with him in the yard, and stood watches with him on the walls. Gone even was the man who told him to ask Lord Bran why he deserved nothing more than a cell and the kiss of steel at his throat. Pod never did find the courage to ask.

No, instead he’d gotten flustered tending to the cuts and bruises on Ser Jaime’s wrist and blurted out his concerns for Lord Tyrion, held against his will in the Red Keep in the clutches of the merciless dragon queen who burned a surrendered city. None of which Ser Jaime had known about until that moment.

Pod’s heart was thumping hard against his ribs when he approached Ser Jaime at the fire that first night away from Winterfell. The older man was sipping from a dented cup, red wine staining his lips. Pod had never known Ser Jaime to drink wine, not like Lord Tyrion, who seemed to live on the stuff. Their queenly sister had drunk red wine too. 

Ser Jaime’s eyes were sharp and focused, though, not glazed as Lord Tyrion’s had often become as the night wore on. Ser Jaime was battle hardened in a way Lord Tyrion never was, and yet Pod had never thought Ser Jaime a hard man until now. Perhaps he had only seemed soft because he was often in Ser Brienne’s company. Ser Jaime’s eyes had warmed whenever they lit on her, his arrogant smirk turning to sincere pleasure at her company. He’d often found excuses to touch her, a knee pressed against hers, their hands brushing when he passed her a plate or filled her goblet at dinner. 

Podrick hadn’t even minded the loss of his early mornings with Ser Brienne, helping her into her armor and discussing the day’s business, because she had seemed so content with Ser Jaime in her bed. Pod couldn’t think of Ser Brienne that way, as a woman taking her pleasure in a man. Clearly Ser Jaime didn’t have that problem. 

His eyes still followed her, no softness in his heated gaze. Ser Jaime was angry with her, but he still wanted her in his bed. Pod wondered if Ser Jaime felt that way about his sister, and knew instantly, horribly, that it was true.

“Ser?” he asked, half-expecting to be sent on his way. Ser Jaime hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words all day. 

The older man looked up at him wearily. “I won’t run off. You needn’t be my gaoler here too.”

Pod’s stomach roiled with nerves and hunger. A pair of plump rabbits were roasting over the fire, fat hissing as it dripped into the flames. The smell of roasting meat was mouthwatering, but Pod didn’t welcome it now. He sat on a fallen log beside Ser Jaime, and wished he’d thought to get himself ale first. For all the time they’d spent in close company, Ser Jaime was still more legend than man to him. “I owe you an apology, ser.”

Ser Jaime shook his head. “You were honest, lad. Don’t apologize for that.”

“Ser Brienne was so upset when she realized what had happened. I didn’t mean to distress you both,” Pod insisted. Ser Jaime was the only one at Winterfell who would understand his worry over Lord Tyrion’s imprisonment. That was all Podrick had been thinking when he spilled the truth to the unwitting knight.

“If Brienne did not wish to upset me, she shouldn’t have lied. Don’t take her guilt on your shoulders.” Ser Jaime found an extra cup and emptied the wineskin into it before passing it to Pod. 

Pod took the cup reluctantly. He had no head for wine. The flavor reminded him of King’s Landing, of standing by while Lord Tyrion was berated by Lord Tywin or humiliated by King Joffrey. He was not looking forward to returning there. “Ser Brienne does not lie.”

Ser Jaime raised an eyebrow. “Then she wields silence quite effectively.”

Pod’s heart sank. More than hurting Ser Jaime, he lamented widening the gulf between the two knights. He glanced about, grateful to realize no one was close by. “Ser, my lady has taught me much, but all I know of lies and deceit came from your brother, not her.”

Ser Jaime snorted at that. “That does sound more likely.”

He hadn’t mounted a very convincing defense of his lady, but Podrick didn’t know what else to say. He quaffed some wine and found he still did not enjoy it much. Too sour. Still, it loosened his tongue enough to ask, “What will you do, when we get to King’s Landing?”

Ser Jaime’s eyes widened, seemingly surprised by the question. He looked away, gaze trained on the fire. “Daenerys holds all that remains of my family prisoner. What would you do, if your lady was the one in a cell?” 

Pod didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. They both knew exactly what he would do if Lord Tyrion still lived, and what he would do if he did not. Ser Brienne had told him many times how helpless she’d felt as Renly died, and how avenging him kept her moving when their circumstances seemed bleak. Perhaps that was why Ser Brienne had allowed him to come south. She might not like Ser Jaime’s plans, but she understood the impulse. “They’ll kill you,” Pod said quietly. “And it won’t save him.”

Ser Jaime took a long drink of his wine. “Then I’ll die avenging my family.” He glanced up at the wheelhouse, where Ser Brienne was talking to Lady Sansa. “I wasn’t meant to survive the war.”

“She won’t let you die for nothing.” Podrick had no doubt that she would champion Ser Jaime just as she would his brother. Her loyalty was not dependent on his own.

Ser Jaime gave him a pitying smile. “Not if coming to my aid will hurt Sansa Stark. She put me in a cage for that girl, she won’t risk Daenerys harming her.” 

Ser Jaime seemed so certain of this, Podrick had to correct him. “She put you in a cage to save you, too. Surely you know that.” 

The older man just sipped his wine and watched the fire. If his eyes slid to Ser Brienne, Podrick did him the courtesy of not drawing attention to it. For all his formidable skill and long experience, Podrick did not think Ser Jaime understood people well. Not good people, at least. But he understood the knight far better after his captivity, after his decision to fight for what remained of his kin. 

The man beside him wasn’t hard, only armored, and he was bleeding inside, as they all were. Too many losses, too much pain, too much cold. It was more than any of them could bear alone. But Ser Jaime insisted on walling himself off from everyone, even Ser Brienne. And it was killing them both.


	6. Jaime II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long hiatus between chapters. My husband has had a particularly long-lasting case of the flu, and my daughter began selling Girl Scout cookies, both of which have been taking up a lot of my time and energy.

Solitude had a way of sharpening a man’s thoughts. Time and silence and nothing but basic bodily needs to distract him. Jaime had had more than a moon’s worth of solitude, his thoughts chasing each other around inside his head until much that had troubled him became clear. 

He remembered being knighted, Ser Barristan looking down on him with pride as the sword touched his shoulders on that long-ago day in the Kingswood, Jaime choking back his heavy breaths so the blade wouldn’t cut him. He’d asked Mormont what happened to Selmy. Barristan died protecting his queen in Meereen, cut down by rebels undermining her rule. It was all Selmy would have wanted, the man so devoted to duty that when Joffrey shamed him and took his cloak, he’d crossed the sea to find a new monarch to serve. 

For all that Jaime once mocked Barristan’s devotion to duty, Jaime was no better. The only difference was that he had always served one queen. No matter the arse on the throne or the color of his cloak, Jaime had done as Cersei bid, slavishly devoted to her. He’d killed and maimed and plundered, all in her name. And at the first sign that he wouldn’t just follow her mindlessly into the dark, Cersei had sent Bronn to kill him. Whether warning or true threat, he would never know, and the last moments between them were full of anger and disappointment. 

Jaime would serve no other queen. He would not pledge himself to Daenerys, nor to Sansa Stark. Even maimed and broken, he was far too dangerous a weapon to put into their hands. He hadn’t needed a sword to take Riverrun or Highgarden, to break Edmure Tully or kill Olenna Tyrell. 

He would have served Brienne, far away on her island in the Narrow Sea. Lovely and green and remote, he remembered seeing it and missing Brienne with a sharpness he hadn’t understood at the time. He knew now, why pain stabbed through his chest each time he saw her pale hair above the heads of the darker Northerners. Why he ached when she refused to meet his eye. She had never even asked him to betray Cersei. He’d done that all on his own. 

He should hate Brienne. He didn’t. He couldn’t, just as he could never hate his sister. For all his faults, he’d never been fickle. He would tell her, before the end, that he understood her choice. He’d moved the heavens to save Tyrion once, and he’d walk through all seven hells to save him again. As long as he didn’t sacrifice Brienne in the process. She’d saved him, or tried to, so many times, even when it hurt them both. If he tried to barter his life for his brother’s, would she let him? Even now, after all he’d done to her, he wasn’t sure.

Days passed. Nights too. All of Tywin’s tutelage about strategy and negotiation seemed inadequate in the face of an enemy who could smite an entire city and decimate an army in the span of an hour. Jaime finally understood, in his bones, why the lords of Westeros had bent the knee to Aegon the Conqueror. They’d likely shit themselves in terror as they did it, too. 

Smoke blanketed the horizon as they entered the Crownlands, and by the time the Kingsroad made its final approach to King’s Landing, no trace remained of blue sky overhead. 

“Shouldn’t the fires be out by now?” Sansa asked, peering out the window of the wheelhouse. 

Jaime often rode beside the wheelhouse, where he burdened no one with his presence. Sansa rarely opened the curtains, keeping the cold at bay as best she could. “Wildfire,” Jaime reminded her. It would burn until it was consumed, and Aerys had a great deal of it. 

The Lady of Winterfell startled, as if she’d forgotten he was there. Unlikely. Jaime had noticed her watching him speculatively when they stopped to rest the horses, eat, or make camp for he night. He was a problem for her. Sansa’s obvious disquiet had grown as they approached the city, and Brienne squinted ahead with grim determination. 

It was Bran’s question, though, that echoed through Jaime’s mind.  _ What makes you think there’s an after?  _ The boy himself had been gone, off wherever his mind traveled, more often than not as they journeyed south. Jaime could not bring himself to ask Bran what he saw of the future now. 

The sun was setting as they crested a hill and found King’s Landing spread out below them. Murky red light spilled across the water, painting the city in blood. Jaime never thought to see King’s Landing again, and he was reminded, painfully, of the last time he returned, when the Sept of Baelor was a blasted hole in the otherwise familiar landscape. 

Now smoke drifted up from the city, carrion birds riding the air currents. The skeletons of ships littered the bay. Within the city, whole districts were no more than rubble, green flame still burning among the ruins. He could scarcely find any landmarks to assess what had survived. The distinctive red tile roofs of the city were gone, the few left intact blanketed in ash. The Red Keep itself looked like Harrenhal: blackened, crumbled, melted. Haunted. A dying city in a dying day. 

“Make camp,” Sansa ordered, and her men scrambled to obey. “We will enter the city in the morning.” Her gaze stayed on the city, and only then did he notice the tremor in her hands. She didn’t think they would leave the city alive either. 

Jaime had become more certain, the closer they came, that Daenerys would remove Sansa from power, now that the Stark girl had proven she would not bow and scrape and give Daenerys everything she wanted. Jon Snow would not be able to protect her, not now. 

The Lady of Winterfell looked so much like her mother, her long red braid and her flinty gaze, her willingness to do whatever it took to achieve her aims. Jaime had liked Catelyn Tully, after a fashion. She was hard when it mattered, yet impulsive as he was sometimes. He’d wondered, once or twice, if he would have fought so hard to escape a betrothal if his father had secured Catelyn’s hand rather than Lysa’s. 

“Podrick, attend to Lord Bran. Ser Brienne, Ser Jaime, with me.” He almost missed her order, so surprised was Jaime to hear Sansa Stark call for him. 

She walked purposefully away from the wheelhouse, toward an outcropping where they could sit on a few snow-dusted boulders. Jaime lagged behind Brienne and Sansa, and saw at least three men-at-arms watching them suspiciously. He kept a respectful distance and did not sit until Sansa frowned and insisted. 

“You have orders, my lady?” Brienne asked brusquely. She didn’t even glance his way. He missed those quick shared glances in which they’d once held entire conversations without speaking a word. 

The dragon roared, somewhere deep in the city. Jaime doubted Drogon was confined to the Dragonpit. For all he knew, she was feeding the beast Lannister soldiers still in their armor to keep it amused and sated. 

Sansa looked toward King’s Landing, her lovely face stony, before facing him. “Ser Jaime, you wish to free your brother?”

“Above all else,” he answered without hesitation.

Her eyebrow rose slightly. “Above vengeance? For Cersei?”

Jaime could almost feel the blood pouring over his hands, a throat collapsing between his palms, the light retreating from eyes that shifted from brown to blue to violet. Someone had killed Cersei, someone dashed her head against a wall and left her bloody and broken. He swallowed down the rage that rose in him. He was one man, with one hand. “Tyrion still lives,” he said as evenly as he could. “If I must choose between revenge and his life, I choose him.”

And if Tyrion was already dead, then perhaps he would slip away, into the city under cover of night, and butcher every Queen’s man he saw until someone cut him down.

Brienne’s gaze turned on him, her fingers twitching against her thighs like she wanted to reach out to him, even now. But she wouldn’t. Perhaps not ever again. 

“I had my revenge, against Littlefinger, against Ramsay. It didn’t bring back my parents, or my brothers.” Sansa looked at him speculatively. “My enemies are dead. I won’t make Daenerys my foe for your sake, nor your brother’s.”

“I don’t expect you to.” If her next words were that she would trade his head for Northern independence, it would not surprise him.

“I almost killed Joffrey once. Sandor stopped me from pushing him off a castle gate when he showed me my father’s head.” The memory was years old, but it clearly grieved her. Her face looked placid, her voice steady, but her eyes burned. 

She had never been more like her mother than this moment, but her aim was off if she intended to wound him. “Joffrey was nought to me. You would have spared us all a great deal of trouble if you’d killed him.”

Sansa’s lips pursed. She hadn’t expected that. She glanced at Brienne, then back to him. “Daenerys will want your head. Why shouldn’t I give it to her?”

Jaime didn’t let himself look at Brienne, but he saw her stiffen anyway. He didn’t wait to see if she would come to his defense again. It was better not knowing. “You should. She might spare you for a year or ten, long enough that you feel safe in the North, long enough to wed, bear an heir or two.” 

Sansa tensed, leaning toward him, waiting for the part she knew was coming.

“And then she will listen to whispers from grasping southron lords that you are a threat, that Jon Snow bent the knee but you did not. They will warn her of a looming threat to her reign, and they will only be too happy to commit their armies to bringing you to heel.” There was more. The castle would not withstand attack by dragon, not even if Daenerys’s armies scattered as Jaime suspected they would. The Dothraki would be tempted by fertile new hunting grounds and the Unsullied would die out on their own unless Daenerys allowed them to replenish their numbers from the many orphans she had left throughout the kingdoms. But Sansa knew all this already. She was canny like her mother. 

“What would you have me do?” She obviously wanted to say more, wanted to point out that arriving with him unchained sent a clear message that she was not the queen’s loyal vassal. But she also wanted to hear what he had to say. Sansa had learned much about diplomacy, but more about survival. Never take a position until your opponent does, if you can help it. 

“Don’t look to me for counsel, Lady Stark. Every ruler I’ve protected or counseled is dead, and I will join them tomorrow, whether you let me leave tonight or drag me with you in the morning.” He heard Brienne’s sharp intake of breath, but he wouldn’t look at her. He couldn’t. 

Understanding flashed in the girl’s clear blue eyes. “Bran spoke to you.”

Jaime struggled to hide his surprise. He knew that Bran Stark never revealed their conversation to his sister, nor the secret of Jaime’s role in his injury, otherwise he would be long dead. But there was something knowing in her tone. “He did.”

“You think you’re meant to die, before the war’s over.” 

They all turned toward the unexpected voice. Brienne had barely gotten Oathkeeper out of its scabbard when Arya Stark stepped out of the shadows.

“Arya,” Sansa cried, rushing to hug her sister.

Arya held Sansa off, her eyes never leaving Jaime. He nodded in acknowledgement. Her blank expression turned pitying. “He told us all the same thing. You never wondered if he can’t see beyond the war because he’s the one who dies?”

“I’m the one who deserves it.” Jaime had failed his father, his children, and finally his sister. He’d betrayed the woman he loved. Both of them. And in the process he’d escaped the Stranger’s clutches more than once. He should have died in the Riverlands, poisoned by his own rotting arm. He should have been killed by a snake on the beaches of Dorne, or burnt to cinders by Drogon on the Blackwater Rush, or torn apart by wights in the snow. 

Brienne had saved him. Bronn had saved him. No one would save him this time. And then he could rest. 

Arya’s face screwed up and she fairly spat, “That’s not how it works, Lannister. Good men die young every day, and bad ones die old in their beds. You think the children who died in that city deserved it?” 

Jaime shook his head. “No. And their blood is on my hands.”

“Then it’s on mine too. I could have killed you at the Twins with the Freys. But I didn’t.”

Jaime wanted to ask what she meant, but she turned away from him then, allowing her sister to clutch her in a fierce hug. Arya was bruised and bore obvious wounds from the battle. She’d clearly been inside the city when it fell. 

“We had no news of you,” Sansa said as she embraced the smaller girl. “I feared the worst.”

Arya bore her sister’s affection with some grace but only patted her briefly. “I’ve been watching Daenerys. And protecting Jon.” 

“From who?” The question came from Brienne, who’d recovered from her shock at seeing the younger Stark sister. 

“Everyone,” Arya said as if it were obvious.

“What’s happening? Have you seen my brother?” Jaime asked, too worried to hold his tongue. 

Arya nodded. “Jon convinced her that she needed allies, not executions. She’s going to make him Lord of Casterly Rock once you lot get there. You’re the last to arrive.”

Relief swamped him. Tyrion was safe, as safe as anyone could be, if Jon Snow had shown the dragon queen that she needed him. The boy was right; a kingdom full of empty castles was one where dissent would sow more readily than winter wheat. 

A hand touched his arm, and Jaime startled, shocked to find that Brienne was touching him. Her eyes found his. Hers were wide and pleading. “Jaime, Tyrion is safe. You should leave, now.”

He’d thought Oberyn Martell a fool for courting death to avenge his sister. Elia’s suffering had ended, her bones long ago returned to Dorne. But he could still remember the brief moment of satisfaction on the man’s face, the relief and joy, just before the Mountain had pulled him down and crushed his skull. He looked back to the Stark girl. “Arya, who killed my sister? Do you know?” 

The girl hesitated, and Jaime wondered for a moment if she had done the deed herself, but the method was all wrong. She wasn’t physically large enough to throw Cersei into a wall. “It was Grey Worm. Daenerys named him Master of War after that.”

Perhaps he was a fool, too, because the rage that poured through him burned away any doubts. Jaime turned to face Brienne, and though he saw despair etched in her features, he did not waver. “Don’t ask me to run, Brienne.”

“And if she wants your head?” she asked, the same furious desperation on her face as that cold night in the courtyard. 

Jaime wanted to reach out for her, to comfort her somehow. But he’d given up that privilege when he turned his back on her that night. “Then she’ll take it, and you and everyone at court will know exactly what kind of queen sits the Iron Throne.”


	7. Brienne II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real life commitments and illness conspired to make this chapter much, much later than I'd intended. Also, alas, much as I tried to complete it in one chapter, the rest demands a different POV no matter how long I spend trying to make it fit in Brienne's.

She couldn’t sleep. She should have, after the Stark girls retreated into the wheelhouse, after the servants helped Bran prepare to rest, after Arya slipped away from camp again. She dozed, a few minutes here and there, exhaustion dragging her into slumber only for her worries to intrude and wake her again. 

The pop and crackle of the fire and the breeze shaking the bare branches was normally a soothing sound, but Brienne kept listening for other sounds. Footsteps in the fallen leaves, swords drawn from scabbards, whispers in the guttural tongues of Essos. 

Every time her eyes closed, she saw shadows moving against her eyelids, and opened again expecting to see an Unsullied or Dothraki standing over her, bloody and ready to strike. Men she had fought beside, now poised to strike her down. She expected to find Pod dead on the ground across the fire, Jaime bound and slung across a saddle, the wheelhouse in flames.

But all was quiet. No hunters roamed the night, no shadowcats or wolves this close to the city. Even the small bright eyes of raccoons and other scavengers were absent from the darkness. 

Even Jaime, still a soldier at his core, able to sleep anywhere at any time, was resting. He was slumped against a tree stump, sword across his lap, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. His eyes opened. Brienne’s first instinct was to look away, to escape the awareness in his gaze, the inevitability of what was to come. For once he hadn’t slunk off alone, he’d stayed near them, around the same fire. Or perhaps Brienne was the one who hadn’t avoided him. What was the point now, so close to the end? If he spent his last night berating her for keeping him from his beloved sister, at least she would have those moments. At least the taste of his grief wouldn’t be the last she had of him. 

For a fortnight, a bit longer, she’d thought a part of Jaime was hers, the part that had held her, that whispered and teased and touched her and smiled when he saw her across a crowded room. Body and mind, if not soul. She’d not kidded herself about that, an entire lifetime couldn’t be washed away in battle or in bed. 

He rose to his feet, slowly, leaving his sword behind, and moved away from the fire, glancing back at her. An invitation. 

Brienne crawled out of her bedroll and threw on her cloak, grateful for the furs warming her neck and shoulders. She too left her sword behind. If he meant to hurt her, he could try. Brienne was larger, stronger, and had the advantage of two hands. But she didn’t think he wanted that.

He went back to the boulders where they’d sat earlier, with the Stark girls, and stood looking out over the smoldering city. Even now, green flames flickered in the darkness. A few lights glowed within the city, torches near the gates and inside the Red Keep. Torches lined the Dothraki camp outside the city walls. 

Brienne took a position at his right, her breath billowing out in the cold air. 

“It’s almost beautiful this way,” he said quietly. “When you can’t see the destruction.” 

Brienne wouldn’t be baited into such pointless talk. “Your brother is safe. Trying to avenge your sister will change nothing.” She heard the desperation in her voice, knew how pathetic she must seem, still so keen on saving him even after he left her. But at least he would know that someone cared, someone wanted him to live. 

“Killing Stannis Baratheon changed nothing, yet you did it. After the battle, Podrick said, when he’d been defeated and there was nothing more to gain by his death.” Jaime sounded so calm, still. It was infuriating. Rage or grief she could understand, but this cold and placid tone was so unlike Jaime she couldn’t understand it. 

“And I felt no better when it was done. Renly was still dead. Sansa was still in danger. Your brother will never be safe with Daenerys. You know that.” It was the only thing she could think of, to give him a purpose.

“You think he’d be safer with me at his side? If you’re so keen to help my brother, convince him to go back to Casterly Rock, to rule the west for whichever ruler comes out of this mess and stop meddling in the game of thrones.” Jaime meant that, she could tell. He was frustrated by his brother’s ambition, by his scheming and habit of drawing the ire of the powerful. 

Brienne was frustrated with Jaime as well, his single-minded focus on revenge, his inability to see a different path. “You have a duty to him, Jaime. If you think I wouldn’t have let Stannis go if it was in Sansa’s best interest, you’re mistaken.”

Jaime laughed then, quiet but bitter. “I left because my first duty was to Cersei, and you stopped me because your first duty was to Sansa.” 

“Is that what you think?” She almost laughed, that he thought it was that simple. 

Jaime finally turned to look at her. “I don’t blame you for choosing Sansa.”

Brienne raised a hand. “I chose honor, Jaime. If I’d chosen Lady Sansa, you would be dead.”

“And if you’d chosen me?” His voice shook just the slightest bit, but his eyes didn’t leave hers.

“We would both be dead.” She tried to keep her voice flat. She’d imagined it, returning with Jaime to his sister, as they had the first time, but this time knowing exactly what it meant to be Jaime’s lover, to know his loyalty and lust and affection. “And none of this would be changed. I can’t regret what I did, Jaime, even though it made you hate me again.”

Jaime scrubbed his hand over his face. He looked exhausted, even grayer than he’d been when he arrived at Winterfell, quiet and serious and grim. “I don’t hate you, Brienne.” He looked away, fixed again on the silhouette of the broken towers of the Red Keep just visible in the waning moonlight. 

“I don’t hate you, either.” She should hate him, everyone else thought she did. They’d all looked at her with pity at Winterfell, those that hadn’t sneered at her as if she’d gotten exactly what she deserved for taking the Kingslayer to bed. “But Mother forgive me, you make me so angry.”

A slight smile curved Jaime’s lips. He’d no doubt heard that before, the man was beyond aggravating, even to those who loved him. Maybe this was why women were not usually warriors, they could not leave their hearts behind when they stepped onto the battlefield.  _ Mother protect him. Please. I can’t lose anyone else. _

His smile faded as he turned his gaze on her, eyes solemn, voice firm. “Don’t stand between me and the dragon again. Neither queen nor beast. Swear it.”

She shook her head, face settling into a mulish expression she knew was particularly ugly. “I can’t promise that.”

“Did you ever meet Dickon Tarly? Lord Randyll’s boy?” He took a step closer, his face so close she could read the anger and frustration in his eyes, see the flush of his cheeks and the tightness of his jaw. 

She shook her head again. “No, just Lord Randyll.”

“An unpleasant man, but useful. His son was green as grass and as convinced of the justness of his cause as you were when we first met. He would have been twice the lord his father was.” Jaime’s voice was rising, clearly remembering young Tarly with some distress. “Do you know what happened to him?”

Brienne did know this. She recalled when the raven had come, how she’d sagged in relief to hear that Jaime had somehow survived, how the maester Sam had turned white when he learned his father and brother were dead. “He died on the Blackwater Rush, when the dragon queen ambushed you returning with Highgarden’s gold.”

Jaime’s face twisted in irritation. “Grain. She burned all the damned grain. The gold wasn’t even there. But the point is, she gave young Tarly a choice, as she had his father, to bend the knee or die. His father was a stubborn cunt, he wouldn’t bow to a woman much less a dragon. But the boy might have lived, if he’d only renounced his loyalty to Cersei.”

Brienne had not heard she’d given them a choice. And yet she could see it, the Tarlys and their men standing on a burning battlefield, the charred corpses of their fellows still burning among the Dothraki riding through, looting the dead and killing the wounded. Bending the knee to the enemy who’d done that would go against everything a knight stood for. 

Jaime didn’t wait for her to respond. “He refused, and she burned them alive. My treason in trying to return to Cersei will be more than enough justification for her to make an example of me.”

Brienne startled. How could she have forgotten? “She doesn’t know you tried to leave. We never told her or Jon.” 

Jaime’s breath seemed to catch in his chest, but then he shook his head. “No matter. Daenerys has no use for me now, and she will have every reason to weaken Sansa. I killed her father, soiled my cloak and then had the gall to stand behind a line of usurper kings and queens. If you speak up for me again, you will burn with me. You will leave Sansa vulnerable, and I will drag you through the seven hells with me for wasting your bloody life.”

His ferocity surprised her, she didn’t think he cared enough to be this angry with her, and yet, she could almost laugh at the absurdity. “You don’t see it, do you? You did the same damn thing as Dickon Tarly. Daenerys spared you, and rather than live with that, you tried to go back to Cersei.” 

“It’s not the same,” Jaime insisted. “Dickon died for his pride, and you would be the same.”

Brienne wanted to shake some sense into him, but she settled for a hand on his forearm, above the golden hand he’d worn less and less at Winterfell. “And what would you be dying for?” 

Jaime’s eyes widened, and then fluttered closed. “I can’t bend the knee. I can’t tell her what she’s done is right. I did that with Cersei, and I shouldn’t have. She will only get worse if no one stands up to her now.” 

Brienne exhaled a shaky breath and leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “I know, but could you try to be less…  _ you  _ when you do it?”

His soft chuckle rumbled between them, but he made no promises. Brienne didn’t really expect him to. 

They made their way back to the fire with an easiness between them that Brienne had not felt in close to a moon, and finally, she slept. 

A terrible calm settled over the Northerners as they packed up in the morning. They rode silently toward the city, pausing only briefly at the broken gate. Jaime wore a hooded cloak, his gold hand hidden under a glove and the gold and ruby hilt of his blade wrapped with linen. He had little chance of slipping away now, but advertising his identity seemed ill-advised regardless. 

The destruction they’d seen from the hills did not prepare her for what they encountered as they approached the gates. The land had been stripped bare, the trees cut down to build the scorpions charred atop the walls. Bodies had been cleared from the approach to the gates, but the bloody ground was still stained a dark and rusty brown. 

The air tasted of charred meat and decay. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Jaime pale, watched his throat work and his shoulders hunch. He spat to one side, grimacing. Brienne’s stomach grumbled, her own breakfast threatening to make a reappearance. 

Jaime muttered a curse and tried to pull his cloak over his mouth and nose, but he couldn't do that and still hold the reins. 

Brienne rode up alongside him, bringing a waterskin with her. She touched it to his arm. 

Jaime took it gratefully, yanking the cork free with his teeth and swishing a generous splash of water around his mouth before spitting it out. He swallowed another mouthful, his shoulders relaxing. 

“Take it slow,” Brienne said softly, resting her hand lightly on his shoulder. 

For a few terrible seconds, they were back at Harrenhal, Jaime ranting and feverish and lost in memories of Aerys. She was gentle with him then, and she could be no different now. This would all be so much easier if she could hate him, if she could hold all that had happened against him. 

Jaime abruptly shoved the waterskin back into her hands. “Stay away from me,” he hissed. 

For a moment, hurt stabbed through her, until she heard the panic in his voice. Daenerys’s Unsullied stood atop the blackened city walls, watching their approach. Nothing they did now would go unreported. 

He urged his horse faster, not looking back at her once. Brienne did the same, falling back into their column beside the wheelhouse. She understood his caution, but it wouldn’t matter. If the queen was determined to punish her foes, she would find a reason to name them all enemies. Her actions at Winterfell, speaking up for Jaime in his farce of a trial, fighting beside him, bedding him, sealed her fate long ago. 

Would it have mattered, if Jaime was here? If he was standing with the Lannister troops, if he’d had a hand in planning the defense of King’s Landing? Would he have stopped Daenerys before she burned the city? Doubtful. The dragon in action was a terrifying destructive force, unstoppable as the hurricanes that battered Tarth from time to time. 

The streets within the city were no better. The muted chatter among the men died as the horses picked their way along the littered streets. Occasionally they had to stop while the men pushed aside enough rubble to allow the wheelhouse to pass safely. 

Birds called to each other, and smoke drifted through the streets, but the people they saw were wraiths, smeared with soot and silent as the grave, watching from dark doorways and through broken shutters. There were so few of them, and all looked wary. As well they might. More soldiers could hardly help their situation. 

The towers of the Red Keep were charred and shattered, rooms opened to the sky like the dollhouse she’d once played with as a child. As they approached, a sickening suspicion filled Brienne with dread. Jaime’s horse slowed, as if he too had had the same thought. Perhaps he had, because he stopped in the middle of the street, allowing the Stark soldiers to flow around him, when they came in view of the gates.

Cersei Lannister was hung from the castle gates, her arms thrown wide as if to welcome the conquering army inside. Her head was rolled forward against her chest, hiding much of the blackened, shredded remains of her face. They had not dipped the body in pitch, they had simply hung her and left her to the elements. Even now a crow sat atop her shoulder, its beak poking into the broken skull.  


Jaime looked up at his sister with eyes so bleak Brienne wanted to draw him away from this sight, urge him forward into the castle yard. But he needed this moment, likely the only one he would be granted to mourn his twin, to pray for her if he would.  She could hear his breaths shuddering out of him, see his shoulders shaking, but no tears fell from his eyes. This shell was not Cersei any longer. It was gruesome and brutal, but this violation could not hurt her. Even so, Brienne was grateful that Sansa was inside the wheelhouse and Brienne had not seen her face when she passed this spectacle. 

At last, Jaime urged his horse forward, and they made their way into the Red Keep.


	8. Jon II

Jon’s feet ached. They’d been standing in the throne room for more than an hour, the wind rustling the dusty, mouldering Targaryen banners hung from the remaining walls and columns. Clouds raced across the sky above, as if to flee before the might of Queen Daenerys, first of her name. She wore no crown, but she didn’t need one. She had a dragon. She was just as beautiful now as the first time Jon saw her, luminous despite the black leather and crimson silk she’d swathed herself in. 

He still wasn’t sure he’d made the right decision, ignoring Tyrion and letting Dany live. She’d killed thousands of people and called it righteous, called it her birthright. She’d taken the city with fire and blood, and now ruled over the ashes. That didn’t feel like victory to Jon. 

He could have stabbed her, slid his dagger into her and ended all of this the day the city fell. As his black brothers had once ended his life. Did they feel righteous when it was done? Did they relish seeing his blood in the snow, or did they turn away? Jon did not know. He’d not asked before he executed them. 

He could not make the choice they’d made, because he understood her too well. Jon still remembered the red rage he’d felt seeing Ramsay Bolton’s banners flying over Winterfell, the smug terrible grin on the bastard’s face when he sent Rickon running across the moors and cut him down. Jon had lost himself in that moment, become a creature of vengeance with no thought beyond killing every man who stood in his way. 

What would he have done with a dragon at his disposal? Jon could not say with any certainty that he wouldn’t have burned everyone in his path and half the castle besides. But he’d come back to himself, as whole as he’d ever been since his resurrection, and to find himself in the midst of such wanton butchery again in the streets of King’s Landing had horrified him.

His men had started calling the city Queen’s Landing. The truth was, whatever rose from the ashes would be almost entirely new, as little of Aegon the Conqueror’s city remained. What would they call her? She called herself Stormborn, the Unburnt, the Mother of Dragons. The smallfolk called her the Destroyer. 

Daenerys had not entirely found her way back. Not yet, and perhaps not ever. She could not be the same queen she’d been before laying waste to King’s Landing. And yet, seated on her throne, she was the only one in the throne room who looked comfortable. Drogon lay curled on the floor behind her, its massive bulk blending in with the steel as if the whole of it was carved from dragonhide and horn. 

Tyrion Lannister shifted uneasily a step below the queen, the breeze ruffling his hair. Dark circles ringed his eyes. He didn’t sleep, Jon knew. Neither did he, not since he’d received Sansa’s raven, telling him she was coming to King’s Landing. He didn’t want her here, nor Bran, nor Arya, not that Arya ever listened to him. She appeared and disappeared like smoke. While the Dothraki roamed outside the walls and the Unsullied patrolled within, Jon didn’t want his siblings anywhere near here. And yet he knew they must come, to bend the knee or suffer the consequences. 

This morning was not the first time they’d engaged in this farce, the pretense that the lords and ladies making their way to the Red Keep were pleased to greet their new ruler. Cersei Lannister had been vicious and callous, but she was known to them. All they knew of Dany were the stories that filtered over from Essos with trading ships, and the ruin that greeted them when they reached the city. 

Robin Arryn had been the first to heed the queen’s summons. He’d looked nothing like the frail child Sansa had described. Still, the tall, lanky boy’s hands had shaken when he walked into the throne room. He’d stood tall and proud when he greeted Daenerys, nearly a man grown now, and then he’d bowed and sworn fealty to the only foe whose attack the Eyrie could not withstand. 

The party from Dorne had arrived not long after. Dany had greeted them warmly, expressing sympathy for the losses they’d suffered in the name of her cause and presenting them with the bones of Ellaria Sand and her daughters to be returned to their homeland. The new princess of Dorne had complimented Dany’s beauty and martial prowess, courting her favor so skillfully Jon almost didn’t notice she was doing it. 

More lords had come: Edmure Tully, Yara Greyjoy, Paxter Redwyne, Roland Crakehall. Did she see the fear in their eyes when they entered the throne room? Jon wasn’t sure. Her moods shifted so suddenly of late, and the nobility all knew how to bow and scrape when the situation demanded. And a queen with a living dragon demanded perfect, unquestioning loyalty. She still saw herself as a mother, the mother of all seven kingdoms, offering aid and comfort to those who bent the knee, and harsh discipline to those who didn’t. 

Tyrion had been able to talk Lord Crakehall out of his foolish desire to stand against Daenerys in the name of House Lannister. Jon had not had the opportunity to speak to Sansa, and he hadn’t seen Arya in days. A cold, crawling dread had settled in his gut as Sansa’s retinue approached. Knowing now that the Kingslayer rode with her unchained, he feared the worst. The city was balanced on a knife’s edge, peace on one side and another war on the other. Sansa and Dany had merely tolerated each other before. Now, he doubted Sansa would willingly bind the North to Dany’s rule. 

Daenerys straightened on her throne as the sound of horses reached them. Footsteps followed, and then the doors were opening.

Behind a single standard bearer, Sansa walked tall, cool and composed in her steel grey gown, six direwolves embroidered on its bodice. Brienne of Tarth followed just behind her, strain evident on her dour face. Podrick Payne came next, pushing Bran’s wheeled chair. Northern lords, soldiers, enough men to remind Dany that Sansa did not stand alone. 

Jaime Lannister walked among the soldiers, distancing himself from Brienne of Tarth as he never had at Winterfell. Ser Jaime looked straight ahead, an arrogant tilt to his jaw. One handed, grey, and unarmored, he still looked more a king than Robert ever had. Lannister was not cowed, or penitent. He would not bend, much less bend the knee. Dany would not like that. Dragon or no, her hold on the throne was frail, even moreso than she might understand. Arya had volunteered to kill her that first night, and he saw the question in her eyes every time they met.

Grey Worm began his recitation of Daenerys’s many titles as the procession approached the throne.

The queen held up a hand, and he trailed off. Her gaze fixed on Sansa. “I think we can dispense with introductions, unless you’ve crowned yourself since last we met.”

Tyrion winced, but Sansa offered only a cool smile. “No, Your Grace. You have the North’s thanks for removing Cersei Lannister from the throne.”

Daenerys’s eyes slid to Jaime. “I’ve no need of your thanks, but I believe you have a token worthy of the sacrifices I have made for your people. Give me my father’s murderer, and I will consider the debt paid.”

Brienne looked as if she’d been slapped. Ser Jaime actually smiled, like he’d bet on this outcome and won. Sansa, for her part, wore the smooth, impenetrable mask she always donned for diplomacy. Hiding her true face behind a wall of courtesy was perhaps the one useful lesson Littlefinger had taught her.

Jon felt lightheaded for a moment, unbalanced. They’d been here before, this motley group tasked with holding together a broken realm. Daenerys and Grey Worm, Tyrion and Jaime Lannister, Sansa and Bran, Brienne and Podrick. At the Dragonpit, trying to make an alliance. At Winterfell, weighing the fate of the Kingslayer. Sansa had never been on the opposite side before. She’d never been the enemy. He didn’t think she was now, but their aims were no longer aligned as they had been. Sansa would have counseled him to kill Dany when he had the chance. She wouldn’t object if he did it now. 

Sansa’s blue eyes sought his for a moment before she answered Dany. There was an apology there, or perhaps a warning. He could not read her as he once had. “Ser Jaime is not mine to give you, Your Grace,” she said placidly, but Jon heard the steel beneath it. She was smart, she wouldn’t openly defy the queen, not here, surrounded by ranks of Unsullied, but she wasn’t going to cower before Dany. 

Jon risked a glance at Dany. Her eyes gleamed. In this game between the two women, she clearly had the advantage, and she knew it. “Then you will not object when I take him.” Tyrion gasped in dismay, but said nothing. Jon could not imagine allowing his brothers to be captured without putting up a fight. 

Dany gestured to Grey Worm and he approached Sansa’s retinue, spear in hand. 

Brienne slid smoothly in front of the Kingslayer, not drawing her sword but placing a hand on its hilt, ready to wield it if needed. “Ser Jaime is under my command, and under my protection,” she growled, not looking away from Grey Worm.

“Don’t be a fool,” Lannister snapped. “Sansa needs your sword, not your bloody head on a spike.” Jon agreed with the man, but he doubted their opinion would make any difference.

Daenerys stood, and Drogon shifted behind her, taking a more active interest in the proceedings. The dragon may not understand the Common Tongue, but it could read the crackling tension in the room. “I’ve heard your honor praised time and again, Lady Brienne, and yet you choose to stand between this oathbreaker and justice once again.” 

“I upheld my vows,” Ser Jaime snapped, breaking free of Brienne’s grasp and shoving in front of her. There was never any chance Lannister would stay silent, the brief time Jon had spent in the man’s company had made that clear, but he was only hastening his own death and imperiling those around him. He would bait her into killing him before long.

Daenerys laughed bitterly. “Your vows to whom? Certainly not the vows you swore my father.”

Lannister’s jaw tightened. “To Barristan Selmy, when he knighted me. Be brave. Be just. Protect the innocent, he said.”

Daenerys spoke fondly of old Ser Barristan. Invoking his memory was a mistake. “My brother’s children were innocent. Where was your devotion to duty when the Mountain butchered them? Or do you uphold your vows only when your father stands to benefit?” She let all her loathing show, holding nothing back now that she ruled from the throne of her ancestors. 

For the first time, Jon saw Jaime’s face fall. Regret. But his voice was still strong and sure when he spoke. “Do not speak to me of Aegon and Rhaenys when your man killed my sister the same way.” His voice rose and his handsome face twisted in a sneer. “You  _ rewarded  _ him, and you hung her from the gates. You’re no better than bloody Robert. You just have a dragon.” 

The dragon turned its head toward Lannister, as if it recognized the word, but did not rise from its spot behind the throne.

Jon allowed himself a glance at his queen’s face. She was angry, but there was truth in Lannister’s words, and pain in his rage. Jon had heard that same pain in her after Missandei died. She glared at Lannister for a long moment, and then asked, “Do you fancy yourself a good man because you fought at Winterfell?”

The Kingslayer, the one who’d told Jon, long years ago, that if the Night’s Watch was not the honorable place he imagined it was only for life, would have laughed at that. Lannisters had no use for goodness, after all. But Ser Jaime, grey and haggard and yet still blazing inside, did not. “I never said I was a good man. But you should be grateful that I am not. If I were a better man, you wouldn’t be here at all.”

“Are you threatening me?” She sounded pleased, hopeful that Lannister would make this easy so she could order his death without any trouble at all. The last time she’d had the opportunity, Brienne of Tarth had stood in her way, and both Sansa and Jon had taken her side. Daenerys wouldn’t allow that again.

Lannister shook his head. His gaze drifted to Tyrion for the first time, for just a moment, an apology in his eyes. “No, merely stating the truth. A better man, Your Grace, would have put his sword through your father’s royal back much sooner, before he raped you into your mother.”

Even Sansa gasped at that.

“Jaime,” Brienne hissed in warning.

But Lannister ignored her. He ignored Grey Worm’s hands shifting on his spear, Jon’s hand finding the pommel of his too-long bastard sword, the rustle of weapons and armor as every soldier in the throne room felt the energy crackling and waited for it to explode. 

Ser Jaime took a step toward the queen, putting distance between himself and Sansa and Brienne. “Go ahead, put me to the sword. Or let your dragon have me like you did to Tarly and his boy. I know you want to. Start with me, and keep going. Kill everyone in this room, in this city, in all seven kingdoms who doesn’t bow and scrape and call you Mother. You’ll end just like Aerys, if not on the tip of a man’s sword, then spoken of in whispers as the Mad Queen, quietly hated until the day you are no longer strong enough to keep the wolves at bay.”

Jon bit back a groan as her eyes flashed to Sansa. Brienne caught his eye, pleading, horrified by the scene playing out before them. 

“I am not my father,” Daenerys bristled.

Lannister smiled at that, a sharp, leonine smile with no warmth in it. He stepped even closer to Grey Worm’s spear, taunting the man. “I suppose not. You did succeed where he failed, after all. He wanted to burn the city to keep it out of Lannister hands, and you did just that.”

She gestured to the ruins around them. “It was war.”

Lannister’s smile took on a condescending slant. “It’s always war. Someone will always be wondering if you can be toppled. Someone will always be watching for weakness, amassing power, biding their time. Will you kill them all?”

“Enough.” 

Jon almost didn’t recognize the voice at first, he was so focused on Lannister and Dany. Then wheels squeaked as they turned, and Podrick rolled Bran forward. Pod’s face was ashen. Bran was as expressionless as usual.

“Stay out of this, Brandon Stark,” Dany snapped. “This is not your concern.”

Lannister’s face had gone white. Jon had noticed his reaction to Bran before, but it was especially jarring when the man showed no fear before Daenerys yet backed away from Bran. He backed right into Brienne, who clasped his upper arm hard and did not let go. 

“All men are my concern.” Bran sounded so certain, as he so often did now. He held something in his lap, the creamy linen standing out against the black and grey of his furs and clothes, but Jon couldn’t puzzle out what it was. Not a weapon, he did not think Bran even carried one anymore. A gift, perhaps.

“You wish to be king then?” Dany asked with a harsh laugh. Her eyes slid to Jon. “I had a king. I do not seek another.”

His rejection, his refusal to embrace their family and its ways, still lay between them, barbed and bloody. So much had been taken from both of them. This had been especially cruel, but Jon could not and would not toss aside all that Ned Stark had taught him. 

“The throne is unimportant.” 

“The throne is mine,” Dany insisted. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright with determination. “I crossed continents, lost two of my dragons and nearly everyone I’ve ever cared for, fought Death itself. No one deserves it more.” 

Bran’s gaze held hers, unmoved by her display of emotion. “You bring destruction, fire and blood, as your kind always has. The Doom brought balance before old Valyria could tip the scales irreparably. But the scales shift. The darkness creeps in, the Night King builds his army. The Others give way to the dragon once again. But you, Daenerys Targaryen, do not understand the powers you’ve unleashed.”

“My queen,” Grey Worm prompted, breaking his silence. He took a step toward Bran, his threat clear. Brienne moved to Bran’s side, sword drawn. 

Bran’s eyes went white, and Drogon got to its feet.

Jon understood what was happening even before he saw Drogon’s white eyes. He grabbed Tyrion and hauled him down the steps as the dragon stretched and turned toward the throne. 

Dany looked between the boy and the dragon. “What are you doing?” She had never encountered a warg, Jon was suddenly certain. 

Drogon stretched its massive wings and flapped them once, buffeting them all with cold air. Bran remained still, his hands folded around the linen in his lap. Drogon leapt into the air, powerful wings propelling it up out of the throne room and into the sky. Its roar echoed over the city. Far away, the screams began. 

Daenerys stood frozen, staring up into the empty sky. 

“Bran. Bran, stop.” Jon looked back, and found Sansa crouched at Bran’s side, holding his hand. “Please.” 

“My lady, this is too dangerous. You should leave,” Brienne urged, sheathing her sword. 

But Sansa shook her head and stood, resolute. “No. We stand. We fight if we must. We cannot live in fear forever.” 

Brienne looked unhappy but nodded. 

And then Bran’s eyes turned brown again. His voice rang out to Daenerys. “You call yourself Mother. You want your people to love you, but you show them only fear and death. Show them your love. Show them mercy.”

Daenerys whirled around, her fists clenched at her sides. “Who are you to tell me what kind of queen I must be?” 

“I have many names and none. I was here when Dawn first kissed this world, when the Children woke and the First Men drew breath.” Bran unwrapped the linen parcel in his lap, revealing a delicate branch of weirwood. He offered it to Daenerys. “Take it.” 

No, it wasn’t a branch. A sapling, one small, supple red leaf clinging to one end and dirt clumped in a tangle of white roots at the other. A weirwood, fragile and faceless. Jon had never seen one like that, in all his travels north of the Wall nor at Winterfell. The heart tree had never produced seeds, much less a sapling, in all the years of his life.

“Dany, that’s a live weirwood,” Jon said quietly, urgently. This was a priceless gift, one not bestowed on a Targaryen monarch in centuries, if Jon had to guess. 

Sansa and the other Northerners murmured in surprise and shock. Clearly Bran had not shown this to anyone. Only Podrick, who wouldn’t understand the significance, looked unruffled by the gesture. Even the Lannister brothers seemed to understand.

Dany stepped forward, her boots clicking on the stones, and took the sapling from his hands. “You wanted my fire when you had need of it. Now you seek to quench it. I am a dragon. Dragons plant no trees.”

“The man who told you that is gone, and with him that time. The Great Grass Sea burns, and rain quenches the flames and nourishes the seeds so that all may grow again,” Bran answered. “The Great Forests of the far north burned long ago to clear the dead wood and make room for the new. Destruction. Creation. An endless cycle. You have destroyed, and so must you create. Plant the tree. Begin again.”

Daenerys wanted her people to heal, Jon saw it in her face. But so many had betrayed her. Why should she believe Bran now, spouting his odd pronouncements in that awful monotone? “How will a single tree aid my people? They need homes, food in their bellies, peace among their lords.”

The slightest smile flickered across Bran’s features. “Past and present flow through the sap of the weirwood. Power as well. You will have the greenseer, the skinchanger, the Three-Eyed Raven to guide you.”

Dany rocked back a step. “You wish to stay here?”

“No,” Sansa said sharply, and Jon echoed her. He had known, early on, that he was meant to balance Daenerys, the ice to her fire. Their shared blood had not changed that. Bran was not meant to be her partner. Bran was meant for the north, for the cold and the snow and the halls of Winterfell. 

“I do not belong at Winterfell any longer. This is my place,” Bran said simply. His gaze met Jon’s, then Sansa’s. There was understanding there, but no sympathy, no fondness. His tone brooked no argument. “Podrick, please push my chair. Queen Daenerys and I have much to discuss. We will go to the godswood.” 

Dany balked at that. “We’re not done here, unless you plan to offer me the fealty of the North and Jaime Lannister.”

Brienne’s hand went back to her sword. Jaime laid a hand on her arm. 

Bran looked up at the queen. Still not himself. Still more the Raven than the boy. The wildlings said that a skinchanger might live on in an animal’s body once its human body died. Perhaps the opposite could happen as well. Once the old host died, perhaps the Raven took over the new host slowly, until only the Raven remained. The thought made Jon unspeakably sad. He missed his little brother, the child that climbed towers and fired arrows and wanted to become a knight. 

Bran’s speech was slow, deliberate. “A queen who trusts no one is as foolish as a queen who trusts everyone."

Daenerys looked startled. Had she heard those words before? Bran was good at that, plucking something out of your past to remind you of his power. She glanced over at Sansa. “We shall speak more later, Lady Sansa.” Her gaze moved on to Brienne, and Ser Jaime behind her. “Lady Brienne, you will remove the Kingslayer from my sight. If I see him again, I will have no mercy.” 

And with that, Daenerys swept out of the throne room, soldiers parting to make way for her. Grey Worm, Bran, and Podrick followed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Circumstances in real life have made it difficult for me to work on this fic lately, such that every time I did, I found it increased my anxiety in ways that made writing almost impossible. While this is undoubtedly rougher than my usual output, and I still don't feel like I have Bran's voice right, this is the scene I've wanted to write from the beginning.  
> There is still an epilogue to go, which will focus solely on what happens now to Jaime and Brienne. I am already partway through writing that.


	9. Brienne III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies again for the delay. There's been a lot going on, as you all know. This is probably fluffier than it would be otherwise. Who needs grim right now? Without further delay, here's the end.

In the end, the bargains struck were simple. Jon, Bran, and Podrick stayed in King’s Landing. Brienne knighted Pod in the Sept of the Red Keep, before the miraculously intact statue of the Warrior. Lady Sansa and Lady Arya returned north, on a ship bound for White Harbor. Brienne did not go with them. She sailed south with Gendry Baratheon to Storm’s End, and then on to Tarth.

Leaving was one of the hardest things Brienne had ever done. But leave she must. King’s Landing was no place for her. She had no taste for court intrigues and political scheming, and Brandon Stark and his chilling voice scared her nearly as much as Daenerys’s fire. 

The island rose out of the morning mist like something from a dream. The deep sapphire of the waters muted and murky, the mist edged in gold as the sun struggled to break through over the forested mountains. 

It was familiar and unfamiliar all at once. As the ship approached harbor, the town came into focus, timbers still bright and unweathered mixed among those that had stood all her life. The people of Tarth had fought back when Euron Greyjoy’s fleet attacked. Not once had the Ironborn successfully raided their shores. Her father had always been proud of that.

Her father. She hoped he would be proud of all she’d done since she left him. She hoped he would understand her aims in returning now. 

“That’s Evenfall?” The voice came from her right, and Brienne looked over to find Jaime, still clad in dark greys and muted reds. His black cloak whipped around him in the wind, his hair untidy as it often was these days. His beard was streaked with grey, no longer the golden lion. 

“It is,” she confirmed. 

“And I will be…” he trailed off, uncertain.

Brienne pointed at the nearby hills, speckled with cottages and tiny white sheep. “There, I think. For now.”

Jaime nodded. “For now.” 

The question of  _ later  _ lay between them, heavy and impossible. She dragged it behind her each day, falling into her bed exhausted with worry. Someday, Jaime might sail to Essos. Any day, really. Ships came and went regularly, and Jaime wasn’t a prisoner. Not hers, anyway. Casterly Rock was out of reach, along with his brother, and elsewhere he was likely to fall prey to ambitious men who might capture him and drag him before Daenerys again. On Tarth they cared little for happenings on the mainland. He might live here as long as he liked without much trouble. She hoped.

But he would leave someday. He always did. She could not allow herself to hope for anything else. So she did not give it voice, not even in her own mind. 

They landed, and her father met them on the dock. His hug was not as strong as it had once been, his face more lined and his shoulders hunched. War had taken its toll, even here. And yet his blue eyes were the same. For a moment, the years melted away.

Those familiar eyes narrowed when she introduced Jaime, but her father held his tongue until they were alone. Though the Rebellion was two decades gone, the death of a king was not easily forgotten. “Why have you brought this trouble to my halls?” he asked, stern as ever. 

The tale fell broken from her lips, some memories too intimate to voice, others shared in the simplest words to soften their brutality. She spoke of fighting the Hound, Arryn men and Bolton men, Stannis Baratheon, and finally the dead, armed and armored by Ser Jaime Lannister with fine plate and Valyrian steel. She recounted Jaime jumping into the bear pit, allowing her to enter Riverrun under a white flag, how he listened to her in the dragonpit and came north, swearing himself to her command and fighting at her side through the long night. With the war ended, she would not abandon him to the dragon queen. 

Her father was quiet for a time, fire crackling in the hearth and Brienne’s heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat. She had not truly thought that her father might refuse to shelter Jaime, that she might need to leave Tarth again to protect him. 

“Is the battlefield all that bonds you, or is there something more?” he finally asked. His gentle, firm tone reminded her strongly of long-ago nights when she was small enough to sit by his feet and prattle on about her day while he read missives from his bannermen. 

“There was more,” Brienne conceded, struggling to keep the memories at bay. “But no longer.”

“And yet you wish him to stay.” His brow furrowed in concern. He cared, that was the truly difficult part of their relationship. All they’d had, since Brienne was small, was each other. She knew he loved her, knew he did his best for her. But she was not made for the life he thought she should have. Leaving had been the only choice for her. Coming back would have been hard even without Jaime. He was a complication that made returning to Tarth far more difficult. Did she truly want him to stay?

“Yes.” The alternative was unthinkable. Not yet. Not now. If Jaime left now, she would wonder for the rest of her life what became of him, if he fell before a bravo’s sword or was sold back to the dragon queen by an ambitious sellsword. 

Lord Selwyn Tarth sighed heavily and nodded. “If this is what you truly want, I will not deny you.”

By morning, Jaime had a small cottage on the edge of a grassy slope near the castle, surrounded by shepherds and their flocks. He refused to accept more charity, selling the golden hand to pay for his food and supplies. 

For a moon’s turn, she only saw him in passing, walking along the cliffs or in town, often with a sheepdog at his side. They hated to see him wandering alone. Brienne wasn’t fond of it either, but she wouldn’t force her company on him. 

She had little time to herself regardless. In her youth she’d spent much of her time in training or with her hated septa, but now her father was training her as his heir. Suddenly she wasn’t shooed out of her father’s solar, instead she was privy to conversations between Lord Selwyn and his steward about crop rotation and cottage maintenance and trading routes. The prices of wool and marble were of endless importance. It was enough to make Brienne long for the days when she stood at Lady Sansa’s back, concerned only with the security of her lady and her castle. Even a war council would be better than a full day in the Great Hall listening to farmers argue about who was responsible for damage to a small bridge or whose children were stealing apples from an orchard. Of course the work was important, but Brienne could not help feeling she was of more use elsewhere.

At night she retired to her childhood bedchamber, with its familiar bed, slightly too short, her toes brushing the footboard every time she moved. With Oathkeeper hanging from a peg on the wall and her armor on its stand in the corner, the room felt tight, like a jerkin she’d outgrown. 

Only one place within Evenfall still felt right. Only the yard felt like home. Only the song of steel settled her nerves. She didn’t disappoint her father there. She didn’t have to be someone she wasn’t. And yet her time there was limited. 

The moon had risen high over the hills when she escaped a particularly dull after-dinner conversation between her father and a minor lord of the eastern shore. Even battering a training dummy wouldn’t settle her mind tonight, so she left the castle through a postern gate. 

Brienne did not consciously choose a path, but her feet took her to a hillside overlooking the straits, and down the hill to the cliff top. Not to the edge, just close enough that when she sat on the cool earth she could hear the waves crashing below. So many nights she’d come here as a child, fingers sore from embroidery practice, hated skirts tangled around her long legs.

Brienne lay back in the dry grass, the rich earth scent so much sharper than in her hazy memories. Above, the bright moon made its graceful progress through the sky. Vast darkness swirled with eddies of stars. Brienne breathed deep, salt and earth and night. Her heart slowed. Her shoulders relaxed. 

“Brienne?”

She sat up, tufts of brown grass clinging to her tunic, and looked around. She knew that voice, had heard her name whispered and laughed and moaned and howled in that voice. 

Jaime stood a little way up the slope, the curious tilt of his head so reminiscent of the sheepdogs that followed him around that she almost laughed. She hadn’t laughed in a long time. 

“Are you alright, my lady?” he asked. So concerned. From anyone else,  _ my lady _ would seem formal, but to Brienne it had felt possessive as far back as the Riverlands. That somehow they belonged to each other.

No longer. She couldn’t let herself forget that.

“I’m fine. I like to come out here sometimes.” 

Jaime squinted into the distance. Dark water, moonlight catching on the peaks of each wave. Here the strait was so wide the mainland wasn’t visible. They might be all alone in the world right now. “My apologies for disturbing you,” he said after a moment, and started to back away.

“No,” she said hastily. “You’re not disturbing me. Come, sit awhile. If—if you wish.” Words tumbled out of her mouth like pebbles over the edge of the cliff. She closed her eyes a moment against the awkwardness and hoped the flush of her cheeks wasn’t visible. 

Jaime hesitated, then settled himself on the ground a few feet away. “I trust you are well,” he said slowly. “You seem well.”

Brienne sighed. “I have a roof over my head and food in my belly. I have no cause to complain.” Trading ships brought news from the mainland. The dragon was often seen flying over the Crownlands, but Queen Daenerys had not burnt anything or anyone since Bran Stark came to King’s Landing. Still, so many had lost their homes and livelihoods if not their lives. 

Jaime raised an eyebrow. “And yet you would, were it not impolite. When have we ever been so polite?” 

Brienne tried to bite back a smile and failed. “My complaints aren’t worth voicing.”

“No? Should I tell you mine? I assure you, yours will seem far less petty by comparison.” He averted his eyes, his smile self-deprecating in a way that she wouldn’t have believed possible in their early acquaintance. 

The instinct to defend him rose as swiftly as ever. “Is someone mistreating you? Tell me and I shall remind them that you are my guest.” Perhaps she’d been too trusting in the goodness of her people. Their tolerance of her own failings had lulled her into false assumptions about how they would treat Jaime.

“Your guest.” Jaime laughed softly, and she heard the echo of Lady Sansa calling him a guest in a voice that left no doubt she meant  _ hostage. _ “The dogs are more useful than I am.” He looked up, meeting her eyes. “You see? How very petty I am? Twenty years in service to rulers and I find I am not suited to a life of leisure.”

Brienne was stunned, and then ashamed. Of course Jaime would loathe idleness. Even at Winterfell she had noticed how restless he became without a task to accomplish, even if the task was simply watching over someone. He’d done that for Bran Stark at times, though he was always quiet and drawn afterward. 

“If you wish to be of use, I’m certain we could find something,” Brienne said hesitantly. Her father might not approve of that, but—

“Wouldn’t you rather I left?” Jaime’s eyes were trained on the sea, his voice resigned. 

“No!” the denial was violent in its intensity, her voice echoing in the dark. She steeled herself. “Unless you wish to go?”

“I wish…” Jaime trailed off. “I wish that my presence here did not stain your reputation. I wish that seeing me did not call up memories you would prefer to forget. I fear that the dragon queen is punishing you as much as me.”

“Is being here such a punishment?” His insistence on living in the past grated. That world was gone, there was no going back to it. If that was his wish, he might well simply step off the cliff and vanish into the night, swallowed by the sea. Perhaps Brienne had been selfish to stop him, if he truly longed for Cersei’s embrace so much he would follow her into death.

Jaime scrubbed a hand over his face, then turned to look at her. “I have no place here, Brienne.”

“You do.” Her face flamed. She should be more measured, more distant, but the thought of Jaime leaving, of not knowing where he was… “It would please me if you stayed.” 

Jaime said nothing to this for a long time, searching her face until she had to look away. “Then I’ll stay.”

Brienne lay back on the cool grass, dizzy with relief. The stars seemed to dance overhead. If not for Jaime’s steady breathing and his dark bulk beside her, she would be lost in the dark sky above, drifting with the stars. 

“Why do you come here?” he asked after some time. 

“It’s the only place where I feel small.” All her life, Brienne had been large, ungainly, head and shoulders above nearly everyone she met. It was a relief to be lost in something bigger. She had once felt that way in the sea, but after it took Galladon, the water had never felt safe.

Jaime lay back on the ground, out of her sight. “Try charging a dragon. You will feel very small indeed.”

She sighed. “Charging a dragon. Armed with a sword. Fool.” 

He chuckled. “A lance, actually. And you weren’t there to stop me.” 

“I’m here now,” she pointed out. Tarth had no dragons, thankfully, only rather rude sheep and incredibly fierce storms. 

“I know. Why do you think I’m here?”

Brienne couldn’t bear to look at him, just stared up into the heavens, watching the stars wheel through the sky. Eventually, they got up, and separated halfway up the hill.

He stayed.

A few days later, the master-at-arms came to Jaime’s cottage and asked him to work at the castle. He was set to work in the yard, teaching children, boys and girls, to fight. Some days Brienne joined him. She made a point of taking an occasional supper with him at an inn in town, where others might see them. Acceptance came slow, but it came. 

And he stayed. 

The nights they met along the cliffs, they talked for hours, about everything, even the things that hurt. Six moons passed before they held hands on the clifftop. Another two before she kissed him. 

Still he stayed.

On the day they were to be married, Brienne woke to find Jaime sitting fully dressed by the fire, staring into the flames. Slowly, she sat up, holding the blankets to her suddenly chilled skin. “Jaime, what are you doing?” Her voice shook. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said with a sigh. He turned to look at her, a soft smile on his face that turned to confusion and then dismay. Jaime got to his feet and returned to the bed, pulling her awkwardly into his arms. “I was a fool,” he said into her hair as he held her. “I’m not going anywhere, Brienne, not unless you send me away.” 

Relief filled her, overflowed until tears dripped down her cheeks and her vision was so blurry she buried her face in his shoulder. That horrible cold dread, the certainty that he would be gone when she woke, had receded as the moons passed, but it had never left her entirely. The longer they were together again, the deeper in love she fell, the more acute her terror when it came. “Don’t go,” she mumbled into his tunic.

Jaime stroked her tangled hair. “I won’t,” he whispered into her ear. “I am yours, and you are mine. From this day until the end of my days. I couldn’t sleep because I can’t wait to say the words. Call the septon right now and I’ll swear them here in your bed.”

A laugh burst out of Brienne, wet and jagged. Evenfall’s septon was old and humorless and had been making unsubtle comments about the need for swift nuptials for several moons, as long as Jaime had been living in the castle and sneaking into her chambers at night. “No, we’ll do it in the sept,” she finally said, trying to wipe her eyes and nose without him seeing it. No bride wished to look a mess before her groom on their wedding day, and Brienne had never truly thought to have this day at all. 

“Then get up, prepare, and I will see you in the sept,” Jaime answered, his smile brushing against her hair, her temple, his kiss gentle on her cheek and then her lips. 

He left her there in her chamber, the early morning sun spilling across the floor and the waves crashing far below in the sapphire waters. 

Jaime was waiting, later, in the sept, with her father and a few of the people dearest to them. They woke the next morning tangled together, husband and wife.

And he stayed. 


End file.
